The Nevilles
by David N. Brown
Summary: Columbus and Wichita search for more survivors in Las Vegas, and discover a prison run by "black ops" medical researchers.  David N. Brown resides in Mesa, Arizona.
1. Chapter 1

**Here's another piece that will be filling in some spaces in the evolving "Saga" chronology. This is meant to be overlapping with the Tal/Little Rock chapters in the second half of "Fear and loafing".**

Week 42

"Morning, Mrs. Kansas!"

Wichita smiled and waved to a middle-aged man whose name she couldn't remember. He had the unmistakable look of someone who was about to offer her a gift. She had crunched the data, and come up with averages of 300 diapers, 100 toys, 40 clothing items, 12 cribs and 1 indecent proposal offered to her every week since she had announced she was expecting. (Most of the propositions were from the same four people.) She spouted off a rote excuse and hurried onward.

"Morning, West," she said as she entered the lobby. "West" was the head of housekeeping for Circus Circus's West Tower, the largest substructure in the hotel-casino. West was also a mother of three children, including a 3-month-old infant born in the casino. Things had been tense between them as Wichita attracted the limelight in the hyper-dense community. "Any news?"

"Point Loma and Cal Tech were at it again last night," West said, naming a couple in Skyrise who accounted for almost 10% of "domestic disturbance" complaints. "I had to get up at 1 AM to clean leftover eggplant off the carpet. Did I ever mention I hate eggplant."

"Where'd they get the eggplant?" Wichita said off the cuff. West tsked.

"There was also an Elvis sighting in the RV park," the housekeeper added. "Three witnesses said they saw a zombie in an Elvis costume nosing around Manor D."

"Not my department... They hardly even let me out of the main building."

"Sure, talk to me about tough luck... Well, your beat today is the Promenade. Again. Don't let the door close on your fat * on the way out."

Wichita left with a prim "humph".

She rode the escalator up to the promenade. She passed her husband coming the other way, and managed to lean across for quick kiss that left him coughing. As she continued upward she knew he was watching her backside. She reached the top and strutted off.

The West Tower promenade was the social and commercial hub of the Circus. Position alone assured its importance: It connected to the lobby and the main tower/casino area by the escalators; the entrance to the Adventuredome was directly ahead, and access to the main parking garage was on the left; and the Skyrise Tower casino was at the other end. The promenade had been developed accordingly into a mini-mall, with a range of shops and restaurants. In the post-apocalypse culture that had developed, the promenade had turned into an "old world" market of improvised stalls. The system worked remarkably well. Sellers had broad freedom to set out wares to sell, as long as they did not intrude into designated throughways, and generally were quick to reach amicable arrangements for sharing spaces. Theft was minimal, if only because the value of most goods had greatly depreciated in the post-war economy. The only rules were no sleeping in the market area, no sale of guns, ammunition, prescription drugs or narcotics, and if one sold goods or services of a sexual nature, to do so with a reasonable amount of discretion.

The traffic was comparatively light for the time of day, mostly mothers in the 20-30 range with children in tow. She was relieved; women her own age with their own children were not nearly as prone to less-than-wanted well-wishing or gift-giving as men or older women. She strode along the edge of the traffic way, sending the occasional encroaching merchant scooting back. Similarly, when she slowed down, several titles just barely peeking from behind black dividers in a magazine stand were pushed down, and several items at an improvise drugstore went a little further under the counter.

As she completed half a round, she dropped into Barista's Bagels and bought a cup of coffee, relishing looks of indignation from several passers-by. Columbus had assured her that it would not do any harm to the baby, no matter what everyone else said, and she preferred angry looks to more the way back around, she walked through the Criss Angel store, which had come to double as a showcase for merchants that Criss himself endorsed as a cut above the rest, and made casual inquiries about complaints that Criss had been taking bribes. After that, she stopped to make very discrete purchases at the drug store and magazine stand.

When she turned around, she found herself face to face with Criss, and a gathering crowd behind him. He smiled, then took out a six-inch knitting needle and appeared to shove it up his nose. He loudly blew into a hankerchief, then pulled out a beautiful spun-glass rose. He handed it too her, to a rising chorus of applause. She took the thing carefully, careful not to drop it or the magazine she had under her jacket. She looked at a little card tied to the rose, and read: "Meet me for lunch at Mexitalia. Columbus."


	2. Diplomacy

The man who had become Wichita's husband was the only man she had ever been _all_ the way with, and she didn't care if no one but him and her sister believed it. His had been a strange personality to bring to bed. He was intelligent, curious, and affectionate, but also quiet, timid and so _tense_. When she initiated their first "intimate" experience, his first reaction had been to push her hands away. It had taken her more time to get him relaxed than to do her work... Then when it was done, he had been so exhausted and clinging and pitifully _grateful_ it embarrassed her. She had managed to calm him down again, and get him to lay down. And that was when he started unbuckling her belt...

"What are you thinking about?" Columbus said. Across the table, his wife only smiled. He took one of her hands in his. With the other, she fingered his gift, now in a cheap vase. "It's beautiful," she said, then added teasingly, "way better than plastic." He blushed.

They literally did not say a word as they ate their plate of spaghetti, but there were smiles, and touches, and soft laughter. They walked out, arm in arm and hip to increasingly ample hip, in the direction of the parking garage. "So," Columbus said, "I was asking around, about what duties you can have... and they say that they may have an outside job for you. We could even work together on it."

She kissed him, long and hard, right in the middle of the market, then kept walking. "Tell me about it."

"Well... It's not a hunting or exploration party. What it really is is a diplomatic mission, and I think you've got just the right skills..."

He went on to explain mostly what she already knew. After more than three months on the offensive, Circus Circus and its allies had expanded their territory almost tenfold. They had gone west, clearing swaths of commercial and residential developments, including a house where Columbus and Wichita now lived. They had gone south, to help the Treasure Island Casino destroy a zombie nest in Vegas' biggest mall. They had fought their way north, to link up with the downtown casinos of the Freemont Street Alliance. Finally, they had gone east, clearing a convention center that had been an epicenter of the city's outbreak and eliminating the team of Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee and Alice, a terrifying trio of plague-resistant cannibals that had taken over the city's last intact hospital.

With the new territory had come new problems. The ones for which the Circus had been least prepared came from the "Nevilles". As areas were cleared of zombies, it was found that an unexpected number of the uninfected had survived, as individuals, small groups and even functional colonies, without any outside support. They had earned the nickname of the protagonist of _I Am Legend_. Unfortunately, like Matheson's anti-hero, the battle for survival had warped and fractured hearts and minds.

Of those who had survived in isolation, Up to half had diagnosable post-traumatic stress. A fourth to a third had some form of hallucinations. One in twenty could not or would not speak. One in a hundred would either attack or flee from anyone who approached. Even apart from these obvious maladies, there were ubiquitous problems, a panoply of delusions, obsessions and superstitions almost as many and varied as the Nevilles themselves. In many ways, those who functioned well enough to engage with the casino dwellers were the most troublesome, in the most alarming cases entering society only to pursue and even draw others into their worlds of madness.

"The board has finally approved a project to take a census of the Nevilles, and start developing a program for assimilation," Columbus said. "They asked Dr. Stanford and me to lead it. I think you would be wonderful as an additional team member."

"Why?" Wichita asked with cautious interest.

"Because, you're good with people," Columbus said. "When you're around, people get more at ease, friendlier... even somebody like me."

They stopped and kissed beside the Tremors Truck. "It sounds wonderful," Wichita said. Then she lowered the tail gate and raised a collapsible camper shell. Her husband paused to check his watch, then yelped as she took him by the arm and pulled him in.


	3. Survivors

"All right," Bruce said, "it looks like this is the last place to check."

His second-in-command Sydney, a black man with what sounded like an Australian accent, came up behind him. Then he stepped into the dim hall.

"Hiya, kid," he said cheerfully. A girl of perhaps eight retreated to an open door, without disappearing from sight. Bruce stepped forward, extending a hand in friendship, and belatedly trying to hide the fact that his left hand had been replaced by a metal ball with a hook and a spike attached.

A woman stepped out abruptly. "We don't have anything," she said. "Go away."

"Hey, hey, it's not like that," Bruce said. "We're not here to take, we're here to help. Is there anything you need?"

"No. Please go."

"Can you tell me who's with you?"

The girl answered, "My brother and Tia Josefina and cousin Pepito are here. Jack and Jane are in one-oh-three. Mr. Morris is upstairs." Bruce looked askance at Sydney, who had been quite confident the condo was uninhabitable above the second floor. His companion only shrugged.

The third floor proved to be heavily water-damaged and moderately charred. The only evidence of recent human habitation was a bag of garbage outside a door at the far end of the hall. Bruce headed for the door and, after a moment's hesitation, knocked. There was a rustle within, and the door opened, to reveal a man in perhaps his late 60s. "Hello," he said, "I heard we had visitors. Would you like to come in?" Bruce was almost too flustered to reply, but managed to mumble thanks as he stepped inside.

Sydney followed inside. The old man set about serving tea to Bruce, but not Sydney, all the while talking about his grandchildren in Salt Lake City. As the old man beckoned Bruce to sit down in a living room, Sydney looked up, and gulped. Bruce gazed upward. The nose of a large bomb was sticking through the ceiling.

The old man seemed perplexed, but then glanced up and chuckled. "Oh, don't worry about that... It's perfectly safe."

Bruce said, "Uuuhhhh..."

"...You sure about that?" Sydney said.

The old man gave a dismissive wave. "It's been up there for more'n six months, and it's never given me trouble before."


	4. First Day

"They've ruined everything," Columbus said.

"What's this?" Wichita said, resting her chin on his scalp.

"These are the new maps of the northern theater," he fumed. "Look at this. The territory is a patchwork. Instead of taking whole areas, they're expanding around them. That's going back to what they were doing before: Encircling the zombies, and then stomping them flat. And they aren't even doing that right. They surrounded a huge chunk of downtown without consolidating gains, and most of the outside of their perimeter is just a strip between 15th and 16th Streets. How long do they think the people there can hold off zombies from both sides? And if one part gets overrun, how will they get supplies and reinforcements to the rest? And what's worst is that there is still an open path out of the area they surrounded."

"Poor hubby," Wichita said, kissing the back of his neck.

He tensed at her touch. "What are you doing?"

"Just trying to get rid of some stress," she said.

"Well, you can't fix everything by getting me in bed."

"What makes you think I wanted to?" she said with an air of indignation. "You men, always thinking about one thing..."

"Right now, what I'm thinking about how to fix this mess," he said. "And you need to start preparing for your job."

Wichita took a half-step back, but kept her hands on his shoulders. After a while, she began kneading at his back muscles, and he slowly began to relax.

An hour later, Columbus emerged from the bedroom, muttering.

The little girl showed no fear at the approach of the red-haired woman, though she looked nervously at the blonde holding the camera. "Hi, sweetheart," said Wichita. "Are you all alone?" The girl shook her head. "So who's with you?"

"M' bear," the girl said, holding up a stuffed animal. "An' daddy and mommy. But daddy's out."

Wichita bent over to look the girl in the eye, wincing at a pain in her back. "Could I talk to your mommy?"

The girl shook her head. "Daddy says she's sick, an' can't talk to people any more. Just him." The smile froze on Wichita's face. "But every morning, she gets out of bed and fixes me breakfast."

"Do you know," Wichita asked in a calm, firm tone, "where she sleeps."

The girl nodded, and then blurted out, "In the freezer."


	5. Hitchhiker

**This is a throwaway gag I've been sitting on a while...**

Perhaps the greatest triumph of the casinos had been the reopening of the Boulder Highway. Stretching from Freemont Street to Interstate 515, the road allowed traffic between Las Vegas and the discrete community of Henderson. Henderson had been only lightly touched by the pandemic, in no small part thanks to a borderline-fascist post-outbreak municipal government. Henderson was a major destination for refugees, though the ruling authorities were not at all happy to receive them. The reopening of the highway provided a simple solution: Refugees arriving in Henderson were sent onward to Vegas, and those who did not have their own vehicles were transported by bus. The system had quickly become a mode of transportation within Vegas itself. People on foot would wait at intersections in the highway, and have a good chance of being picked up either by a bus, or a patrol vehicle.

The Tremors truck pulled to a halt for a tanned, blond woman standing by the highway. The driver, a red-headed woman, leaned out. "I'm Wichita Kansas," she said. "You need a ride into town?"

"Yeah," the blonde said. "I was driving into Vegas, and my car- well, the one I was driving- broke down."

"So, what should we call you?" Wichita said with a smile.

"Beverly," the bond said as she stooped to pick up a duffel bag. "Hills, that is." She looked curiously at the curly-haired male passenger. "Say... Do I know you?"

She screeched in indignation and thought she heard the man cry out in surprise as the redhead hit the gas.


	6. Sister, sister

**Now, for some drama...**

Life in the United States of Zombieland was defined by the the tension between settling down or staying on the move. On the road, there was reasonable safety, but looming uncertainty: Just over the horizon could be food, gas, goods and shelter, or zombies, outlaws and even worse perils. But making a place of shelter a home could carry a steep price. Staying in one place all but invited the infected, not to mention raiders that roamed the roads. It also reintroduced the problems of sanitation, as one once again had to dispose of things that the mobile could simply leave by the road. Perhaps worst of all, it reintroduced the sense of ownership, which led to gathering more than one could carry, and familiarity, which evolved naturally into sentimentality, so that some day, any day, one might face the need to flee, but be unable or unwilling to leave.

Trailers and mobile homes offered some measure of balance between the two, and some took it to curious extremes. Few were more curious than Il Deuce. The vehicle had begun life as a GMC Scenicruiser Greyhound intercity bus. While not technically a double-decker, the split-level bus looked close enough to fool casual eyes. On retirement, the bus had been converted into a luxurious tour bus, then, in the wake of the apocalypse, had been partially restored to a passenger vehicle. The result was seating for 20 passengers, plus living quarters for the crew and select guests and a very generous cargo hold, and when necessary a serviceable elevated position against zombies and raiders. Il Deuce roamed a path through southern Nevada, Utah and northern Arizona, carrying people and goods between known settlements, and sometimes forging into unknown territories. Over time, a modest, semi-organized fleet of vehicles had accreted around the bus. Once or twice a month, Il Deuce and its companion vehicles stopped either in Henderson or Vegas.

While Columbus examined fresh fruit and milk from a refrigerated semi, Wichita talked to new arrivals as they got off Il Deuce and two buses accompanying it. She found herself immediately drawn to a blonde woman that climbed down from a short Chevy school bus on "Bigfoot" wheels. The woman looked no older than herself, but carried a girl of three or even four in her arms. "Hi," she said. "I'd offer to shake, but it looks like you have your hands full."

The woman smiled, her haggard features brightening. "Yeah. Looks like we caught the same bug." Wichita returned the smile, smoothing her front. "You can call me Chacha. This little lady is Bell. And you are-?"

"Call me Wichita."

"So- I guess you're from Kansas," Chacha said. "I was born in Benton- Arkansas, I mean- but I moved to Kansas City when I was nine. I guess I'll always think of there as my home."

"So... You have any family?"

Chacha's eyes darkened. "I had a little sister. I lost her. Before the Pandemic, I mean. There were... problems at home. CPS found out about it, and they took us away, put us in separate foster homes."

"Yeah, don't get me started on foster care," Wichita said. "I made it through with my sister... foster sister, actually... Guess sometimes they do something good. We made it here together. But she went out of town a few weeks ago..."

"I'm sure she'll be back," Chacha said.

Columbus gazed after his wife, and also at her companion, as they walked away. He discretely took out something he had convinced his wife was destroyed: A photo, torn to pieces and taped back together, of two girls, one of about eight, the other 15, or then again maybe just 14, with a young man. He looked again at the new arrival. There was no way to be sure... but he was sure enough.

The younger girl in the photo was his sister-in-law. The young man had abused her, until the authorities put her in foster care. The older girl was Little Rock's biological sister, who had looked the other way...

And the woman walking with his wife was the same person.


	7. The apple thief

A startling proportion of the Nevilles were children, sometimes as young as three or four. While most had survived in the company of one or several adults, a large minority had stayed alive all by themselves. Children seemed to have more versatile minds, better for handling the trauma of the zombie apocalypse. But they often did not cope nearly so well when brought into the emerging society of the casinos.

The issues were numberless and heartbreaking. Many would only sleep in places that felt secure, from under their beds, to locked closets, to high shelves. It was not uncommon for them to resist being removed from where they were found, and an especially pitiful little boy still went into fits, crying that he had to be home when his mother returned. The stories were numberless and heartbreaking, but things still happened that took even the hardened by surprise.

Willie Bigg was Circus Circus's best man for dealing with children. The dwarf was 3'9", and unlike most midgets had limbs of normal proportions to the rest of his body, so that he looked very much like a child. He readily conversed with persons of all ages, and his small stature made him non-threatening to children who were known to cringe, cry or even flee at the site of an adult. Wichita knew it had to be bad when Willie called her for help at 10 PM.

She arrived to the sound of wails and shrieks from the bedrooms. Strangelove followed behind, trying to hold her camera unobtrusively. One coherent word could be made out in the child's cries: "Apple! Apple!"

Willie stepped forward to meet them with a slight but noticeable limp. "All this started at lunch time," he said, his reedy voice rising to a piercing falsetto in his agitation. "Each kid gets a third of an apple, see, and it's three or four apples to a pound, so every day, we get two ten-pound bags outta the fridge to feed sixty kids. So, today, we ran out only halfway through, an' the only way it coulda happened is if somebody walked off with a bag. Security did a locker check of the adult staff. They didn't think any of the kids was strong enough to carry it off. But then one of the other kids told me that a boy named Petey had the apples in his bed. I came, expecting to find some of the apples stashed under his bed. But what I find is that he has the whole damn bag- he didn't even eat any of them- under the covers, and he's got his arms around it like it's a teddy bear. I tried to take it away without waking him up, but it's heavy even for me, so god knows how he ever carried it away. Then he wakes up, screams and starts kicking me. I've got brittle bones, you know! It took two security guys to take that bag back... Okay, I know that sounds rough; we didn't want to do it, and I woulda let it slide if it were just one or two, but a whole bag, I mean, it's not like one kid could even eat them all before they spoiled... Now, he won't go to sleep, he won't stop screaming, and he's upsetting the other kids!"

Wichita was already dialing her cell phone. "Austin...?"

The doctors who had examined Petey were convinced that he was not less than seven, but in his malnourished state he looked more like six or even five. His pajamas were clearly freshly soiled. He scowled but did not scream or attack as Wichita entered. Columbus followed, with his arm around his wife. "Oh-io," Petey said, sounding like a toddler.

"Hi, Petey," Columbus said, stepping forward. "I hear you found some apples today."

"Found it. All by myself," Petey said emphatically.

Columbus belatedly turned. "Do you still have the bag? Okay, bring it."

Willie half-carried, half-dragged the bag. Columbus took hold of the bag. "Since you found it, the bag is _all_ yours."

"The whole bag?" Petey squeaked.

"As much as you want," Columbus said. "For you, and for anyone you want to share with."

Petey nodded. "I'll share with Jeb an' Susie, an' Ms. Iowa. An' Bobby and Bell, I guess."

"That's great," Columbus said. "Now, you know apples need to go in the fridge, right? So you can't just keep them all here. But we can keep them safe for you in the kitchen. Then you can have them tomorrow." To Petey's regressed mind, "tomorrow" and "yesterday" could mean an indefinite number of days.

Petey began to smile, but then frowned and finally bawled, "But what if they're not there tomorrow?"

"They will be," Columbus said. "And here's how you know." He reached into his bulging pockets and took out two cheap, decorative plastic apples. "These are my apples. They aren't the kind you eat, they're a special kind that you look at. They don't have to be in the fridge, and they _never_ go icky." Petey took them, eyes widening in wonder. "I like having them to look at, but because you've been such a good boy, I'm going to let you keep them. I know you will take good care of them. Tomorrow, I'll tell the grownups in the cafeteria that you're taking care of my apples for me. In fact, why not bring them along to show them? Then, they'll get out two of your apples for you and your friends."

Petey looked grateful, but still cautious. "Can I see my apples?"

"Just ask the lunch lady," Columbus said, "and she will let you look at your apples. They will be right there behind the counter."

As Willie led Petey away to be cleaned up, the boy clutched the plastic apples to his chest. "When Jews were rescued from the concentration camps, there were problems like this," Columbus said quietly. "Starvation had probably killed more of them than the gas chambers. Survivors- not all, or even most, but a lot- became obsessed with storing up food, even if they already had more than they could use. There doesn't have to be a trauma to bring out the behavior, but when something does happen, there seems to be more of it, and worse.

"That little boy... he will be all right. He's probably always going to have anxiety, and he might turn out to be a pack rat. But he will know what he's afraid of isn't real- I think even now he understands that in some corner of his mind- and he won't have to bury himself in food to live with it. In the long run, it may be the ones who are adults now who are the worst off."

"Speaking of," Willie said, "what is the apple supply like?" Columbus only shook his head.

As they left the children's area, Wichita smothered him with a kiss, and held his hands against her abdomen. "I know it's not what you wanted, yet... and I know you don't think you're ready for it... But I am _glad_ I have your baby in me, and I _know_ you are going to be a fantastic father."

When they returned to their home, he took her, and she made him take her again. Then she held him tightly while she wept, and would not let him go.


	8. Small Deceptions

**Semi-random naughtiness, centered on something that has bugged me about the movie's assumed chronology. Yes, the museum is real, but its portrayal here should by all means be regarded as a fictional construct.**

It was another day, another contact with a newly located group of survivors. This time, it was in- "the Erotic Heritage Museum?" Columbus groaned. His wife stifled a giggle.

Bruce and Sydney led the way, followed by Strangelove, with Columbus and Wichita in the rear. "Seriously, Austin," Wichita said as they made their approach, "I still don't get what it is with you and..." She touched her belly. "You give it, you take it, you ask for it, but you never want to _talk_ about it."

"Can't we talk about this some other time?" he hissed.

"Can you think of a better time?"

The Erotic Heritage Museum was in the general area of Fashion Show Mall, brutally won two months earlier. Its 17,000 square feet of exhibition space was dedicated entirely to the display of erotica, which patrons and staff insisted was distinct from pornography. "That just means porno with an inferiority complex," Sydney opined.

They were greeted by a smiling woman standing at the museum entrance, who was certainly not less than 60 years old. Bruce had a gun in his one hand, and Sydney made a point to keep a proper grip on his shotgun, so the woman was left to go to Columbus, who took her hand stiffly. "I'm Maude, and you must be Columbus and Wichita," she said, and there was no gainsaying that if any woman was to bear the name Maude, it would be her. "It's good to get some young people in here."

Another woman, with hair gone about halfway from red to gray and a reasonably well-preserved figure, joined them as they entered the lobby. She was introduced as Rose. "Hot damn, it's Mrs. Robinson's mother," Sydney said. Rose curtsied.

"I was a showgirl," she said by way of explanation. "I could tell you when, but then a lady isn't supposed to tell her age."

"I'm 21 myself," Wichita said, bringing a strange look from her husband. Rose laughed.

"Oh, our patrons do run toward the older crowd," Maude said in answer to delicate questioning. "We cater to, and try to cultivate, an open and dignified view of sexuality. Most people don't seem to develop that kind of attitude until later in life."

"If you ask me," Rose said in a disconcertingly maternal voice, "it's not the age, it's the times. Prefabricated buildings, fast food, microwave dinners, instant coffee, instant win, instant messaging. So much change, all about more more more, faster faster faster, now now now. The younger people are, the less they know about how to wait. They can't understand why they need patience to enjoy the finer things." Wichita smirked at Columbus. He scowled.

Week 13

The trailer at Hank's Specialty Autobody featured a shower and a full-sized double bed. Krista and Austin had used the former, but not the latter. When she was done with him, he stretched out on a couch, and she knelt beside him in her jacket and a pair of shorts, encouraging him to hold and feel her. Mostly, he stroked her hair. He was still breathing heavily. "C'mon," she said, teasing, "I'm flattered, but enough's enough. I mean, it's not like I gave you anything you don't do for yourself." Her voice wavered in sudden uncertainty.

He raised his head, gazing at her with eyes half-open. "If I did that to you," he said, "do you think it would be the same?"

She rested a cheek against his abdomen. "No," she said.

Then he told her her secret, and she knew it had been no secret to him: "You're a virgin."

She shifted, bringing a slight ripple of muscle that made up for her unease. "Yeah. Technically, anyway. I- do things. Sometimes, people offer. I don't want to go that way, just wading in bit by bit. I always figured, if I go in, it's gonna be a cannonball." She breathed sharply as he took a feel, then sighed. "No, Austin."

"Okay." He leaned back and shut his eyes.

"Not now, I mean."

"I know." She stretched out her legs, tilted her head back and shut her eyes. Then her eyes widened as he whispered, "I love you."

...And eight months later, that remained among their longest conversations about love-making.

"Oh, I guess we have about twelve people here," Rose told Sydney as they walked through an exhibition hall. "A lot more people drop in to visit. And they _do_ visit. You'd be amazed. Last week a road warrior rode up on a bike, walked in with fresh blood on his clothes, dropped his ruck... and sat down and cried. That's the kind of place we've always tried to be, where people can talk about things that they thought all their lives had to be secret. And that's what makes us different, hell, the _opposite_, of any so-called `adult entertainment' place. Mark my words, there was as much prudery in the porno theaters and strip clubs as there was among the Puritans... Why, when I started in the business, I saw friends smile and wave at each other across the theater. When I decided it was time to move on, most of the `gentleman' wouldn't even look me in the eye..." Behind her, Wichita elbowed her husband.

Looking over her shoulder, Rose said, "We get plenty of news in here, and a lot of it has been about you two. When the Mall was being cleared, we came out to see you go in. Even before that, there were a lot of stories... About Andy Capp, the bikers, the Playland, even about some kind of mess at a mall in Abilene. We were delighted to hear about the baby. Mm... would you two like a more private tour?"

"I dunno, but I'm ready to give it to 'em," Sydney said as he turned for an exit.

As the door shut, Rose turned and smiled. "You get the idea: No secrets need to be kept here," she said, waving her arms expansively at the exhibits. "But nothing has to leave here, either. So, why not talk about what's on your mind?"

"We make love all the time, but he never wants to talk about it," Wichita said. "And now he's mad at me for asking him to come in here." Columbus scowled.

"That's not it," he said. "I think making love to her is beautiful, but I don't want to review it play by play. We don't need to, because we learn all we need to just being with each other. And this, holy *, this is totally not my game, but with her, I could get through it and have a good laugh after. The problem is what she said to you."

Rose turned her piercing gaze to Wichita. "What?" she said. "All I did was tell her my age."

"Did you ever tell him that?" Rose said.

"No, but he never asked, and he never told me his age either," Wichita said.

"I'm twenty-five," he said.

"Yeah. So how is that a problem?"

"Remember our first dance?" Columbus said. Wichita covered her mouth. "We talked about 1997. You told me about your first kiss, your first tattoo- okay, _fake_ tattoo- and your first R-rated movie. You made it sound like you were as old as I was then. But I was twelve. _You would have been eight_."

"Well, actually, nine," she said. "But why get mad at me? I wanted to make you feel happy. I knew if I said how old I was, it would make you think you were behind everyone else."

"Then how do I know anything you told me about 1997 was true? How do I know anything else you told me is true? How about in the trailer, huh? Anything you left out then?"

Wichita started to stammer and fume. Then Rose cut in: "Excuse me." Columbus fell silent, if not in actual respect than at least out of surprise. "It seems to me, young man, that there is at least one thing you can be sure she has told the truth about, something I daresay not every man in your position has been able to say." She looked at Wichita, then back at him, smiling. "She is really pregnant."

Wichita stifled a laugh, briefly, but under a steady gaze from Rose, she lowered a hand from her grinning, blushing face. Columbus scowled, and fumbled for something indignant to say, but the momentum of his petty anger was broken, and within moments he capitulated, smiling the same sheepish smile he always did when she caught him in something silly. Then they had their arms around each other.

"Now that's settled," Wichita said, gently drawing back, "why don't we finish the tour? We might see something to _talk_ about tonight."

As they departed, Bruce and Sydney stepped out of one of the gallery entrances. "Now that gal shoulda been in pictures," Bruce said.

"Nah, I'd say she shoulda been in Congress," Sydney said. "It makes you wonder what it woulda been like, if all the politicians, diplomats and generals in the world had stepped down, and let the burlesque show girls take over?"

"Yeah," Bruce said, rubbing his chin, "but what if the politicians, diplomats and generals had started stripping?"


	9. Paris

**This is a vignette I've been sitting on for quite a while, modified to fit in with the latest evolutions of my story arc. I may use it as an alternate lead-in to "Congress of the Lepers" in "Death Valley Drag".**

Eleven days after Patient Zero ate a contaminated hamburger in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a pilot had gone prodromal in the cockpit of a jet shortly after takeoff from McCarran International Airport. The plane had crashed into the Augustus Tower of Caesar's Palace, virtually demolishing the complex. For reasons not completely understood, the Bellagio, on the other side of Flamingo Avenue, also caught fire and collapsed. The Flamingo was left outwardly intact for the most part, but with a surface charred and riddled with fractures, and an interior no one was brave or foolhardy enough to investigate. Finally, Bally's suffered significant damage, enough to send a tower on the east end toppling onto Flamingo Avenue, but not to prevent a large infestation of zombies that grew even thicker in the adjacent Paris and Planet Hollywood casinos.

Even among the casinos of Vegas, Paris Las Vegas was uniquely audacious. Its counterfeit of the world's proudest city was fronted by a huge replica of the Eiffel Tower, most of which rose directly from the roof of the main casino. It was only1:2 scale, and the top had been shorn off, most likely in a collision with the same plane that destroyed Caesar's Palace, but still stood more than 300 feet high. A large hunting party covered the front of the casino, with base camp at the foot of the faux Arc de Triomfe. Sydney and Wichita watched from the top of the Arc. Deputies on foot were closing in on the Eiffel Tower facade, while sharpshooters on cherrypickers held the perimeter. Shots rang out intermittently as zombies in the open were picked off. An especially loud report came from the undisputed Most Powerful Handgun In The World, as a deputy known as Q fired through a strut of the tower to take an especially well-hidden zombie. But none were inside the casino, yet, except her husband.

If the outside of the casino seemed designed to outrage the French, the inside seems designed to offend the very senses. The architect had seen fit to simulate outdoor streets, with a sky blue ceiling, false building fronts, street lamps and even one of the feet of the fake Eiffel Tower. With the power out and significant damage to the structure, what had been jarring had turned positively ghoulish. Columbus shuffled through the main casino, guided only by emergency lighting and sunlight from the occasional hole in the roof, holding himself back from panic at every figure seen or heard passing by. The infected were more aggressive in the dark, and more sensitive. His zombie disguise, even with the scent of infected blood added, could easily fail to convince. But, as he continually reminded himself, zombies relied on body language, and attacked at the sign of fear or weakness. As long as he moved steadily and confidently, there was a good chance he would be left alone. So far, his luck had held, but he didn't like the sound of footsteps following behind, drawing closer.

"Okay, nobody shoots unless you're sure what you're shooting at," Wichita announced. "Anyone who shoots my husband is going to have a pissed pregnant lady to deal with."

"Yeah, I'd rather take on a swarm of zombies any day," Sydney said.

"That's my man," she said.

"What's that? Over." Bruce spoke over the radio.

"Sorry… Columbus is on the first level of the tower. Looks like he already found a few."

Heights were among the few things Columbus didn't have a phobia of. Still, he was nervous as he stepped onto the floor of the first level of Paris's faux Eiffel Tower, which was roofed over as a restaurant. What he feared most was not heights, but being cornered. Especially since he had still not seen the one that had been following him... He surveyed the restaurant, gripping a nightstick concealed under his right sleeve and reaching for his silenced .38 revolver. The restaurant floor had ample sunlight, which only made it harder to see what was in the shadows, and beams simulating the latticework of the iconic tower provided plenty of places to hide. Still, he had little trouble spotting four, just in the line of sight from the door. There were sure to be more, enough for a large pack or even a swarm. He looked back at a huddled shape behind a beam, to find it rising. Abruptly, it lunged for him. He instinctively raised his right forearm to throat height, and the zombie ran right into the nightstick. It lurched back with a gargled, guttural cry, and he was assured that it saw him as a rival zombie, not as prey. He began to relax. Then it picked up a bottle from the table. One shot to the eye brought it down, and a second stopped its twitching.

A tiny earpiece for a transmitter vibrated; he thumbed it off. It was no time for distractions. He thrust the nightstick into his belt and took the revolver with both hands. The silencer had taken care of the sound of the shot, but not the falling body, and it did nothing at all for the scent of gun powder and blood. One zombie rose, and others, more than were in sight, stirred. He hunched his shoulders, a gesture of submission, while keeping his gun on the zombie as it shambled toward him. It reached the freshly slain zombie, halted, and dropped to its knees to feed. He relaxed, while backing toward the door he had entered through. This was one time when a strong-arm hunting party was best.

Only, the door was locked.

"Something isn't right," Wichita said. "Everybody get ready to move in."

From out of the darkness, a voice called: "Hey. Samaritan- Don't look at me, you idiot. Do what I say and you can get out alive." There could be no doubt that the speaker was a leper, infected but (at least relatively) sane and intelligent survivors who preyed on the zombies. A leper named Jack Ketch had saved his life in Sunrise Hospital, but the speaker's voice was unfamiliar, sounding masculine but soft enough to leave gender in some doubt.

"So... a feeding pen, huh?" He had found Jack Ketch in the Stratosphere tower, where other lepers had penned docile Type 2 zombies like cattle, and hunting parties searching the Boulevard Mall had reported a similar pen. "Do you have a key?" he whispered.

"No, not my place. Sorry."

"It seems like these things are bad luck." At the last pen they had discovered, Ketch said that the experiment in "domestication" had ended badly, as the keepers degenerated into zombies.

"Yeah, but that's not what happened here. The ones who set this up aren't dead, or gone native; they're just plain gone. We don't know where, either."

"Sounds bad."

"Not as bad as it is. But never mind that now. You have to get out of here, and you've got another problem. You could say a friend of yours is in here, and no, not Jack Ketch."

"The Capp?" Andy Capp was the most notorious zombie in the city, and in his most recent exploit had stolen and apparently figured out how to use Wichita's Skorpion machine pistol.

"Bingo. He's been trailing you for a while, you know. I guess you interest him."

"I noticed he's turning up more. I figured he was just going where the meat is."

"I think it's more than that, but it don't matter now. He didn't follow you up, but I expect he's coming another way."

"I can just signal for help."

"An' don't warn them about the Capp? Or do and get them running in to catch him?"

"Okay. Where do I get down?" He still had not seen the leper's face.

"Not here; you could shoot the lock, but they'd follow you down. Door, back corner. Get onto the balcony, and you see a stairway down the leg to the casino roof. And _fast_, these guys are getting curious." Sure enough several zombies had already gathered, and looking too interested, while more were getting up. He used two bullets on a zombie that got between him and the corner. He didn't bother with the door. Three sweeps of the nightstick cleared away enough glass to climb onto the balcony.

Chief Sahara was quick to countermand Wichita, and even she hadn't told anyone to go in, but it hardly mattered. Just inside the facade of the Louvre, chattering assault rifles were nearly drowned out by the steady roar of an M60 machine gun. In an amphitheater at the base of the Arc, a more orderly assault had breached the lobby and now pressed into the heart of the main casino, while more hunters scaled a fire engine ladder to the roof. Wichita herself was trying to restore some order. "There's something wrong in the tower restaurant," she said. "Secure the casino, but don't go upstairs, repeat, do _not_- _AUSTIN!_"

Austin used his last few shots on the padlock that barred the gate to the maintenance stairway, a discrete addition that was built more like a step ladder than a staircase. The lock held, and several blows of the nightstick only fractured the plastic club. He heard shouting and looked up, then groaned at the sight of his wife. She was waving and gesturing, but he was already tuning her out. He began reloading the revolver, and was loading the fourth chamber when a female zombie came charging at him on the balcony. He jerked back, sending ammunition scattering. A clumsy swing of the nightstick momentarily slowed the zombie, but shattered the weapon once and for all. He snapped the cylinder shut and pulled the trigger, only to hear the click of the pin on an empty chamber. He kicked the zombie in the knee as he retreated, and cocked the gun to advance the cylinder, but the next chamber was empty too. The zombie regained its footing after a stumble, already lurching back up to speed. His hands were trembling so much he had trouble getting his thumb on the hammer to advance the cylinder again. Then a window fractured and the zombie fell with a bullet in the brain. He looked in the window, expecting to see the leper, only then registering that he had not seen him before. Instead, he saw the shadowed face of Andy Capp, grinning from behind his wife's Skorpion. He cocked the revolver and emptied three chambers through the glass, but the zombie was already gone.

He looked back to the gate, to find hunters already breaking open the stair at the bottom. He loaded one more round into the gun and fired one more time, finally knocking the lock open. As he descended, he heard a metallic "spang" from the restaurant behind him. In the casino below, guns were falling silent on empty magazines. He almost plodded toward the ladder, and did not brighten in the least when Krista reached the top to meet him. "Austin, what were you doing?" she said, in a grating tone that always made him wish, however briefly and shamefully, that he never had to hear her voice again. "Why didn't you talk to me?-" They both froze. Below them were shots and screams, as the unleashed swarm poured into the casino and out into the street.

Columbus and Wichita sat on the steps of the rooftop pool, staring morosely at the stagnant water. He stiffly put an arm around her. She was unresisting but aloof. After a moment, she rested her chin in her hands. "How bad?" Columbus said at Sahara's approach.

"Bad enough," he said.

"Anyone see Andy Capp?"

"Two deputies emptied their guns at him behind Harrah's. He got away."

"He could have gotten there through the footbridge from Bally's. We need to put sentries there." Only then did he look up. "Did anyone see a leper?" The chief shook his head, obviously skeptical whether Columbus's encounter was even real.

"You did good work today," Sahara said. "Both of you. Really. But maybe you need to think about whether you do your best work together or apart."

As he walked away, Wichita rested her head on her husband's shoulder. He brushed back her hair, but did not wipe away the tears that ran down her cheeks.


	10. Fallen Warrior

**Here's one that should be WAY earlier in the story arc. I'm doing it now to introduce something I have planned for "Death Valley Drag". **

The zombie seemed to materialize out the dark, lunging with hands outstretched and bloody jaws open wide. A rasping voice replied, "Chew on this." Then a spherical prosthesis rammed into its mouth.

Bruce dragged out the zombie's carcass with his hook, and set it next to a pile of twenty more beside the JC Penney's entrance to the Boulevard Mall. Columbus, in zombie get up, scribbled a note in his book. "That's... twenty," he said. "And we haven't even reached the corridor yet."

"If anyone's askin' me," Sydney said, "I say bugger this. It may not be as bad as the Show, but it's bad enough, and this time, we don't have the security of a casino at stake. Why not just fall back to a perimeter around the mall, bar the doors and wait for them to do the job for us?"

Bruce looked thoughtful, but Columbus said emphatically, "That would mean tying down a lot of men for weeks, when we're already stretched thin. Not to mention the damage if the zombies break out. But even that's not what worries me most. This mall is practically across the street from the hospital where the Pariahs attacked my wife and me. My guess is, Tweedle Dum launched his attack from here."

"Makes sense," Sydney said. "This place could have been like an indoor game preserve."

"Exactly," said Columbus, "and I want to know- in fact, I think we _need_ to know- what else he was up to. Like the tripwire my wife ran into. If Clan Tweedle used traps like that a lot, if they set some of them up to kill or do serious injury instead of knocking people down, we could have serious problems reclaiming their territory. The same goes if any of the Type 2s trained to use weapons have survived. We don't know how Tweedle Dum did it. He might have kept them in a feeding pen, like the nest at the base of Stratosphere, where some of them might survive feeding on the others. Or, he might have managed to teach them to feed themselves, in which case they might not just have survived, but be roaming free. And, the Clan might have left something behind that could help us. I'm sure they left stashes of food behind, and maybe weapons. They might even have kept some kind of record of what was in their territory. I don't expect to find anything written down. I''m pretty sure they had actually lost the ability to communicate with each other in words- maybe _replaced _verbal intelligence with something else. The only time one of them spoke was to us, and I've wondered if even that was more like mimicry than real speech. But even without language, they might have left something concrete, like a map."

"Okay, I'm sold," Bruce said. "But why not cut right to the chase, and start where they're most likely to be?"

"All right," Columbus said, "there's an entrance on either side of Sears, which makes it the best hunting ground. So, we start there."

"Man, they don't stop coming!" Sydney exclaimed as he loaded another clip.

"Yeah, but there can't be many more of them!" Bruce said. He punched a zombie lunging over the customer service counter with his ball prosthesis and jammed an ice pick-like spike into its ear.

A radio crackled with Columbus's voice: "I think I found the Pariahs' nest. Call in the cavalry."

Within seconds, gunfire erupted at the edges of the store, as more hunters burst in to attack the zombies surrounding the counter from behind.

"This had better be worth it!" Bruce shouted as he emerged from the escalator in Sears' second floor.

"Come back here," Columbus called, not quite shouting. Bruce and Sydney followed his voice to the manager's office, where they found walls decorated like Lascaux with hundreds of odd, crude doodles, made with everything from markers to paint to what looked like blood. Columbus pointed to a corpse, still clutching a bloody 2-by-4. "This came at me as soon as I came in. There were three more already dead; it looks like they turned on each other. They didn't have the intelligence or initiative to go downstairs and kill zombies from the pen."

He waved to the wall. "Most of this is going to be indecipherable. For what it's worth, it looks to me like it's more practical than artistic: There's large groupings of one symbol, repeated over and over, and arranged in rows of ten. Those must be for counting. Then there's this..." He pointed to a large drawing in the corner. It was far from perfect, but it was hard to imagine it was anything but a map of Circus Circus.

"...But the kicker, is back here," Columbus said as he led them to a store room. "The trophy room."

The other men tensed, and Sydney looked visibly queasy as they looked inside. What they saw proved to be unnervingly sanitary: a large pile of weapons and gear, and on one wall, a whole suit of body armor, nailed up like a butterfly on display. Sydney took a closer look, and swore. "Where the * did _this_ come from?"

"I don't know, but it couldn't have done much good," Bruce said.

"No, it was very good," Columbus said, fingering a hole in the chest. "It just wasn't good enough." The suit was remarkably light. Its outer layer was a camouflage mesh. Beneath were flexible segments of armor, like a cross between an armadillo and the Michelin Tire Man. The sleeve lifted easily in his hands. Then there was the helmet, with a visor studded with gadgets.

"I think this is a nuclear-biological-chemical warfare suit. It's five to ten years ahead of anything that's been announced to the public," Columbus continued. "My guess is, its secondary function is camouflage against sensors. If it's airtight enough to keep out chemical weapons, it could also mask the wearer from the zombies' noses. He must have been tough. That's why the armor's here, instead of in the pile. And then there's this."

He lifted a gun that looked vaguely like a crude replica of a "Schmeisser". "This looks like a pro version of the nail guns Q built for us to use in the hospital." He squeezed the trigger, and sent a tiny, needle-like projectile into the plaster with only a faint hiss. "There's two magazines under the barrel, one green and one red, I figure one for tranquilizer and one for poison, and a switch to alternate between them. This LED counter shows 175 rounds in one and 217 in the other, and they aren't even full. My guess is, the LED is what gave this guy away. All this stealth technology, and they decided to add a red light. Though the darts wouldn't have helped; there's a faint chemical scent."

"So why haven't we seen these guys?" Bruce fumed. "Where were thay when we were fighting the swarms?"

"They coulda come later," Sydney said. "They mighta pulled back. Or maybe they just had other orders."

"The most important question isn't why we haven't seen them," Columbus said. "It's how many more of them are still out there."

Krista was waiting for him when he returned to the Circus parking lot. "So," she said with a smile, "what did you find at the mall?"

He smiled and held up a too-cute stuffed duck. "Well, I got you this..."


	11. Lepers' Crusade

**Because of the direction my "saga" is taking, and because this story is getting more traffic, I've decided to repost an incomplete "Death Valley Drag" arc here. To start with, here's an alternate draft for the first chapter in the arc.**

Wichita still was routinely annoyed at the way Columbus would stare at her. But, it was worse when she gazed at him and he wouldn't look back. The sleeping arrangements in the Tremors Truck were single beds on either side of a central aisle. They had been intimate in the night, but retired to sleep on separate sides. Now, as the first hint of dawn shone through the blinds, she lay on her side, watching him. She was certain he was awake, but he lay still, downright rigid, staring sternly at nothing unless it was the ceiling. And so she watched him, waiting. Finally, she reached out and touched him. "Austin... I love you," she said in a hoarse whisper.

"You don't need to be here," he said. "I can go a night without you. And a morning."

He sighed and clasped her hand. "I love you too... but you shouldn't have come."

"I want to be with you," she said, drawing his hand to her belly. "Especially now."

Only then did he look at her. "I know, and I do too," he said, preparing to try again to explain something she seemed unable or unwilling to understand. "I do, too. I just- I don't always need you. And when I'm out there... sometimes it's better just to be waiting. You know... a little _good _tension, so I'm keeping alert." It was true enough, but no less so than what he didn't say, that withholding from her made him feel stronger.

"So... You're going to be out all night."

"Yes, and maybe another day after that." She had an expectant look, irritating but hard to resist. "I will be fine. So will you."

"All right."

"Seriously. I need to be out there in... 20 minutes, tops."

"Then get up." He sighed and threw back the sheet.

"Now this is something that it takes a woman's touch to do well," Krista said as she applied makeup. "How does it look?"

"Absolutely disgusting," he said, examining his zombie disguise in the mirror.

"Bruce is already mad at you for not helping enough at Paris," Wichita warned Columbus as they drove to the rendezvous point. "He'll brain you if he hears about this."

"That's why we're waiting to tell him till after," Columbus said. He brushed her hair back before as he stepping out of the Tremors truck.

"Austin," she said, "you haven't told me what you're doing either."

He nodded. "I want to. This will have to do. Come out, brethren." Suddenly, the detritus lining the alley in which the truck was parked sprouted into a dozen rag-clad forms. _"Ola, senora,"_ said the tallest of the lesioned figures.

Wichita sized them, then snarled at a man she recognized: "Jack Ketch."

"Hey, I saved your life, and his, and _his_ too," he said, pointing last at her belly. "It's not my fault I had to cut a few corners."

"You left me in the dark, unarmed, against a trio of cannibals," she said.

"Hey, you had a chance to take down two out of three, and you weren't unarmed then."

"Enough." A female figure stepped forward, the Sibyll. She looked over Wichita. "So, this is la Peliroja- the other half of the legend."

"Legend?" said Wichita, glancing to Columbus and Ketch. "So it- it's really true? I mean, you- you lead the lepers? And you saved my husband?"

"Listen better, child," said the Sybil. "It was he who saved me."

"I- I'm sorry," she said. Waving to Columbus, she said, "He- he hardly ever talks about you, you know. I heard more from Ketch than I ever have from him. It's... hard to sort out." She looked around her. "Well, if you know who I am, and my baby's father is going with you, then tell me- who are you?"

"We don't have time," said a muscular leper with blonde hair, better dressed and with a subtly different bearing than the others.

"For her, we make time," said Sybil. "Eleven brothers and sisters go with me upon the quest. Ketch you know." She then pointed to the tall leper, who grinned to reveal a mouth full of fillings. "This is Boca. These are Jaime and Juan, witnesses for my Mother." She indicated two masked men standing close to her, and then an older leper close by. "This is Qijano, a brother as infamous as Ketch for his bravery."

She then pointed to two adolescent girls, one older than the other, crouching close together. "These are Luna and Estrella, sisters from before the change. They have seen you before, without being seen, and a few times gave help, before you ever knew of your need. Such is the way of the Brothers and Sisters." She pointed to two even younger lepers skulking by the alley walls. "These young ones are Conejo, the swift, and Lagertijo, the climber." She waved at a fat leper who seemed to sprawl even while standing up, and said somewhat disdainfully, "That is Tuerto. He may appear ineffectual, but he is good at finding things out."

Finally, she looked to the blonde man. "And this, this is Tigre Blanco. He was a warrior, before, and is an even deadlier one now. He knows the ways of _soldados_. Only with his help may we prevail."

Wichita surveyed the gathered lepers. "Thank you," she said. "I know words aren't enough, but with all my heart, thank you. I hope you all come home safe. And please, whatever else happens, keep my man safe." Columbus turned and kissed her goodbye, once on the lips and once on her belly. Tears welled in her eyes. He walked away, without looking back, not because he was aloof, as he might once have been, but because if he looked back, he would turn back.

As she started Tremors, Sybil called out to her: "Peace, Peliroja. Your man will return, and the son within you will have many brothers and sisters."

As Tremors rolled away, Columbus stared at Sybil, almost livid. "How could you do that?" he said. "Just promise her I'll be back safe and sound, give her a certainty when she should be preparing for the worst? If I don't make it, what do you think that will do to her? To the baby? And don't give me your psychic games. Even if you believe it, * it, even if there's _something_ to it, you know you can't foresee everything! So how do you get away with telling her that?"

"_Samaritan,"_ Sybil said, with the casual force of a drill sergeant. Jaime and Juan drew closer. "Know this, Samaritan: You _will_ return alive to your bride. Whether it is in victory or in shame, whether you return with us or as lone survivor, whether you and she live to celebrate the day or rue it, all that may be uncertain, but you _will __**without a doubt**_return. And even if you believe my prophecy might fail, consider what it means for you: You carried her heart, and then her child's future, and now you carry your hope as well, and if you fall, you smash them all. So perhaps, rather than chastising me for giving her hope, you should be more vigilant not to fail her yourself, and perhaps then, my prophecy will bring its own fulfillment." She let a moment of silence pass, then turned. "Come, we must go quickly, lest all be lost."

As Columbus followed, a leper fell in step beside him. It was Tigre Blanco- the White Tiger. "I like you," he said. "I like you just the way you are. Keep your head down, don't get cocky, and you will get through fine prop


	12. Tiger

**New intro: As of Feb 12, I'm revising this a bit to reflect a modification of my ideas for Tigre's background, inspired by rereading "Black Hawk Down". I don't in any way intend to argue that such a progam exists, officially or otherwise, nor even to speculate seriously that it could exist, but it would make a certain amount of sense, wouldn't it... (Orig. intro) Incidentally, I've decided on a perfect person to play Jack Ketch: Michael Massee, who has come to my attention playing Kubrick on Supernatural. And for Tigre, my best idea is... Hillary Swank? Hey, I'd be scared. Also, I have "Wheel in the Sky" stuck in my head from watching Supernatural season 2, so if anyone wants to imagine a background song, that will do as well as anything. Whew, on to the actual chapter...**

Columbus shifted from one position to another in the lepers' ragged column. The only ones among them who was friendly, by any conventional definition, were Tuerto, whose name meant One-Eye, and Qijano, probably named for Don Quixote. Tuerto spoke little English, and his delivery in Spanish was fast and of indifferent grammar. Quijano seemed reasonably fluent in English, but when he tried to speak at any length, he easily became overexcited, and was liable to start dropping Spanish words, phrases and whole sentences into the mix.

The others were uniformly a bust. Ketch was clamming up in the presence of the other lepers. Sybil, Jaime and Juan spoke mostly to each other. Boca (literally "the Mouth", and almost certainly named for the Bond villain Jaws) showed no speech of any kind. Conejo and Lagertijo were scarcely less taciturn. The sisters Luna and Estrella, eerily like his wife and sister-in-law, spoke to each other in short bursts of Spanish or English, but showed no interest in speaking to him. That left Tigre Blanco, the White Tiger.

After addressing Columbus briefly as they started out, Tigre was all but silent. When he spoke at all, it was in whispers to the Sybil. He quickly concluded that Tigre was trying to hide how much he rather than Sybil was making the decisions. After several fruitless attempts to speak to Tigre, he casually came up alongside Jack Ketch. "Talk about something else, or keep walking," Ketch said.

"Huh?- I mean, what do you mean?"

"I know you have questions. But some things, Brothers don't ask, and Brothers don't tell. So don't ask." Columbus started to formulate a protest, but soon let it slide, dropping back.

Their journey was already well beyond the frontiers of the casinos, much further than it was necessary to go to reach Luxor. Their course was south and west, into Spring Valley, and at the rate they were going it would take them into Enterprise. He scowled again.

"And they say you're a jumpy one," came a voice in his ear. He started, stifling a shout and almost bringing his .22/.410 to bear. El Tigre was alongside him, he could not guess for how long, and he felt nearly equal parts terror and disgust.

"Hey. Nothing personal," Tigre said, waving a hand in a vague conciliatory gesture. "If it helps, in your place I'd be suspicious about me too. So, let's lay everything down. Any questions you have, you can ask me, and I'll make you a promise: If I don't tell you the whole truth, I won't tell you any lies, either... Hold on." He flitted to Sybil, and within moments, their course had changed. Columbus was looking back suspiciously when Tigre spoke in his ear again: "Pick up the pace. We have a prying eye overhead." He looked back again, still suspicious, and was almost rear-ended by Tuerto, who muttered unintelligibly as he went by.

"Now. Where were we?" Tigre said. "Right, I gave you a deal, ask any question, and I either give you the true answer, or no answer. Look me in the eye and see if I'm lying." Columbus looked carefully at Tigre. Behind the lesions and more than one scar was a face that was incredibly young, certainly younger than himself, maybe too young to drink. But behind the face was the gaze of a mind in a shadow. He had seen it before, on the face of his sister-in-law the only time she had caught herself talking about her biological sister, on Tal when he talked about his son, sometimes on his wife's face when he saw her gazing at him. But this shadow was longer and deeper than he could have imagined. He did not let himself be lulled into trusting Tigre, but he could tell that he was not just putting on a friendly face, and that the answers to any questions he might ask would likely be trivial compared to the dark depths of secrets behind those eyes.

"Okay," he said. "Where are we going?"

"A safe spot, in the right place," Tigre said. "From there, we can make our way where we're going as safely as it's possible to do it."

"Where are you from?" Columbus asked.

"I was born on American dirt, but the dirt was in West Germany," Tigre said. "No, I'm not quite as young as I look. So, now it's 20 questions; I can roll with that."

"Military family, I suppose?" Columbus said.

"Yeah... There's parts of my family history that are still classified," Tigre said. "But I didn't exactly follow in my ancestors' footsteps. They were soldiers. I was a medic- though that's a bit like saying Davey Crockett was a politician. Ever heard of CSAR?" He looked pleasantly surprised when Columbus nodded; the letters stood for Combat Search And Rescue. "Anything you would have heard about would be the `parajumpers'; they were Air Force, and a well-established branch to boot. What I got into was the Army's version, too new and experimental to be disclosed to the public, and it was taking the idea even further: They wanted people who could not only go in with the troops, but be fully capable of fending for themselves- up to and including defending themselves. Of course, that didn't exactly go along with the accepted rules of war or medicine, so there was a lot of secrecy and shell games, like with the SEALs and Deltas, only for us it was still working. The ones who knew about us called us `Los Angeles de la Muerte' - their idea of ribbing." There was a clear look of old indignation in his eyes.

"How did you get infected?" Columbus asked. There was a hiss of breath, then a low chuckle.

"That's one of those questions Jack was trying to warn you about," Tigre said. "But you didn't know, and I said you could ask, so no harm, no foul. As it happens, I didn't get bit, I got a shot: I volunteered to test a vaccine."

Columbus almost stopped in his tracks. "There's a vaccine?"

A nudge of Tigre's elbow kept him moving. "There was, at least. It worked, too, except, of course, not all the time..."

"_When?_"

"Oh, I got it in week 5, after I heard about it at the end of week 3. Lot of people tried to talk me out of it. Some of them would have liked to flat-out stop me, but all those rules about not forcing or fooling people into `volunteering', well, they can be swung both ways... But I expect you mean when they had it, and I wasn't anywhere near that pay grade. Still, reading 'tween the lines, I think they put the pieces together on Strain 0, maybe a few months before Tulsa."

Columbus shook his head, almost dizzy at the flurry of thoughts. "Then why didn't they mass produce it? Or warn the police and the hospitals? Or why not just tighten inspections of meat and livestock on the border? Any of those things could have stopped the Pandemic, and there's no excuse that they didn't! They knew it all, and they didn't do anything!"

Tigre shook his head. "People always say that, after. Barbarossa, Pearl Harbor, 9/11... They go nuts, blaming, suspecting, even rewriting history. They never understand how it really was for the people who were really there. Talk about `fog of war', I've seen it, and I've seen enough to know, it's not half as bad as the fog of politics. People making deals, keeping secrets, telling lies, planning for next year but not for next week, saving pennies and wasting pounds, straining gnats and swallowing camels, seein' leaves but not a * forest. And then the * hits the windshield, and everybody starts saying, how could anybody be that stupid, when they should be amazed they didn't * up even worse than they did. I'm not on the Sybil's vibe a lot of the time, but I'm with her on this one. You just gotta have peace."

Columbus nodded, but still was breathing heavily. "I think maybe that's enough for now," Tigre said. "But if you have a question, I'll be there for you to ask."

"Wait," Columbus said. "You were a soldier. You must have been with other soldiers. What happened to them?"

"That one," Tigre said after a long pause, "I think I need to take a rain check on."

"Do any of them know the answer?" Columbus said, waving his arm to indicate the rest of the lepers. "Or _any_ answer?"

Tigre shook his head. "Again, it's like Ketch said: Brothers don't ask, and Brothers don't tell." Under Columbus's hard stare, he added, "Not that we need to, always. Sybil, I'm pretty sure she knows, most of it. Ketch, I wouldn't put it past him to make a few good guesses. And Tuerto, there's no tellin' what he knows."

"So tell me if I have this right: One leper could know something terrible about another, and the other could know he knew... and you wouldn't even talk about it?"

Now Tigre halted. The darkness behind his gaze could have made two black search lamps of anti-light to cast utter darkness wherever they fell. "Why don't you return a favor, Samaritan, and answer me a question." He leaned nearer. "When you wake up screaming in your beautiful Peliroja's arms... does she ever say if you were screaming _words_?" He drew back in satisfaction. "Then maybe we aren't so different after all."


	13. Godfathers

As unnerved as Columbus was by Tigre, the soldier did not bother him as much as the sister's Luna and Estrella. He supposed that it was as much as anything that they reminded him so readily of his wife and weeks-absent sister-in-law. But, there were many less benign sources of discomfort. They did not try to talk to him, and if he approached them, they would more often than not actively withdraw. Yet, they seemed fascinated by him, especially Estrella. Often, he heard the younger sister coming close behind, which, given the lepers' stealth, he believed meant she wanted him to know he was there. Not that he was likely to see her if he turned around. She did it again as they passed into Enterprise, winding through a residential street. He turned around to catch a glimpse of a child's shadow, and an all-too-close look at Tuerto as he came plodding up from behind. He also saw Jack Ketch, grinning, and went for him.

"What's going on with those two?" he hissed.

"Why are you asking me?" Ketch said in bemusement. "You think we read minds?"

"Isn't that what _you_ want people to think?"

"Now where'd you get that idea?"

"When I met the first Sybil, she told me my name."

"So you think she had to read your mind to know that?"

"No, but she said it like it was supposed to be some big mystery, and she wanted me to think it was psychic or something?"

"So, what, if a Brother happens to know something, and one of the Gente jumps to a completely silly conclusion about how he knew it, then we're responsible for him being silly? And I thought you were one of the better ones..."

Columbus sighed. "Never mind that. I just want to know, why does Estrella keep following me?"

"Why do you think she's following you?" Columbus heard a scampering sound behind him, but didn't bother to turn.

"I can hear her, but she's never there when I look."

"So... you think she's following you because you can't see her following you? Amazing what forensic science can do these days." There was an audible giggle.

"Don't tell me you didn't hear that."

"Okay, I won't." Then, with a sly glance, he added, "Though, if she is following you, it might just be that she's following up on her investment." Then he sped forward.

"Samaritan." It was Estrella, close enough to whisper and still be heard, and this time, there had been no sounds to advertise her presence.

"What?" he said, and when she did not speak, repeated irritably, _"What?"_

"What the Sybill said about Peliroja, it is true, Samaritan," she said. "We followed her, a long, long way, since before she met you."

"How? In your own car?" She stifled a giggle. Lepers were rarely seen with any kind of technology, and it was absolutely unknown for them to travel in vehicles. "Impossible. They would have covered more distance in an hour than you could in a day."

"Are you sure? Even with stops, breakdowns, detours?"

"I don't have to be sure of anything," he said. "Even if you could have, why should I believe you did?"

"We saw them, when they took the SUV, and the Hummer," she said. "We were watching them when they turned back." He froze. When Wichita and Little Rock robbed him and Tallahassee the second time, they had driven off, only to return. He had been grateful enough to stay with Wichita, but he had never asked her what had really happened.

"What are you saying?" he said. "That you know why they turned around?"

"I know what you want to know," she said, enunciating so carefully as to be stilted.

"So?" he said. "You aren't know as much you want people to think, and I don't believe you even know as much as _you_ think. I don't need to ask you, and I don't have to believe you if you tell me." He walked faster, but she darted into his path, forcing him to slow but not stop as she spoke.

"Truth, Samaritan. Not you have to ask, because _you know_. You know, she knows you know, and it takes you both to pieces."

"Yeah? And how's that any of your business?"

"Sybil said, Ketsh said, we care for them, and now you are with her."

"They didn't ask you to follow them," he said. "They didn't even know you existed. And why you and them, anyway?"

"Each of _los Hermanos_ may choose _una Gente_, to be as _padrinos_- godparents," she said, fumbling for English. "Not any nobody, _misma alma gemela..._ soulmate, yes? _La Peliroja_ is of Luna, and I am of _la Nina_, but I not gone with her."

He nodded, but frowned. "Why not? For that matter, if you're their godparents, why didn't you help them more, like in the Playland?"

"_Mandatos_," she said. "_Nunca revelao su mismo. Da que necesitado, no que deseado._"

"So, what, not being seen was more important than keeping him from getting eaten?"

She shook her head. "What they needed, we did already give."

"What? What's that supposed to mean?" he said. She smiled and started to turn. He grabbed her shoulder, heedless of a wordless but obviously disapproving cry from Boca. "Me? Are you saying you set us up? Maybe like sabotaging the SUV while we were in the store?" She met his eyes, and he immediately let go.

"No matter what we did. No matter, even, what they did," she said. "What matters, Samaritan, is, either speak to her, or forgive in your heart and let go." She turned and resumed a normal walking pace, stepping out onto a freeway. Then, suddenly, she stumbled and fell. Columbus's immediate response was to step forward to help her up, but Tigre, another presence he hadn't been aware of, caught him by the arm. He was about to protest, when he saw the blood pooling beneath Estrella's head.


	14. Twilight

**Here's a condensed rewrite of a couple "Death Valley" chapters to bring things up to speed.**

Wichita spent the afternoon in the camper shell of the Tremors Truck, in the parking lot of Terrible's, the southernmost functional settlement on or (technically) near the Vegas Strip. Built at the intersection of Flamingo and Paradise, and vaguely resembling an adobe mission, it was in an area that had suffered not only the heaviest zombie infestations, but the worst of the fires, plane crashes and military "interventions" that accompanied the outbreak. Incredibly, more than 300 people had held out with no outside support whatsoever, until the general offensive was pushed blocks sout of any other objective just to reach them. The rescuers had been nonplussed when the famed 300 met them with indifference.

Fortunately, the people of Terrible's were far more welcoming to individual travelers, and for once Wichita was grateful as yet another passer-by stopped to offer her a gift. "From the management," he said, offering her a gift basket of soaps, lotions and shampoo. "And if you ask around, I'm sure you can find a place to use them."

She smiled and thanked him, then cried out in surprise and delight as two more visitors approached: "Chacha! Bell!"

"Cheetah!" a five-year-old shrieked as she ran up to hug Wichita. Her mother followed close behind. It had been only a month since the young woman had stepped off a militarized bus at Circus Circus, but they already considered each other good friends. Chacha reached Wichita and embraced her, while the little girl turned around and hugged her mother.

"So, I heard the settlement board offered you a place to the south," Wichita said.

"They talked about it, but they haven't given me anything solid yet," Chacha said. "Right now, I'm just doing piecework on the delivery circuit. I heard you were in the neighborhood..."

Wichita escorted Chacha and Bell into the decidedly cozy camper, which consisted of a kitchen/corridor and a dining area whose two seats doubled as beds. Her guests went first, to sit down while she set about fixing early dinner on the Liliputian stove. "Ramen okay?" she said as she filled a pan with water. Bell cheered, and Chacha smiled. Wichita turned to shut the lower half of the camper door. That was when she heard the sound: A thin but piercing cry, more like a whistle than a scream, carried on the rising evening wind, with the depthless grief and hollow foreboding of a banshee's wail.

What was eerie at several miles' range was agony at the scene in northern Enterprise, where Luna was on her knees, screaming over her sister's heart-breakingly intact body. The mortal wound was smaller than a pencil, almost concealed in her hairline, without an exit wound to match. The pool of blood came from her mouth, probably nothing more than a bite to the tongue as she fell or a few teeth knocked out on impact.

Columbus huddled against a wall, jamming his fists into his ears. He could not guess how the slight young woman could make such a sound for so long. He was beginning to wonder what it even meant, whether she cried out in grief, or warning to others, or to frighten away the unseen slayer. And still it went on, rising and falling like a siren but never cutting off. Finally, it was too much. He stepped toward the surviving sister, reached out and touched her shoulder. He cringed and stifled his own cry as she pivoted, suddenly silent, crouching like a panther about to spring. "I'm sorry!" he blurted.

_"Por que?"_ Luna hissed.

Only in the sudden silence did Columbus again become aware of the rest of the lepers, to a man (and woman) crouching, still but stiffly alert, their ragged, dirty clothes and grimy faces blending unnervingly with their surroundings. He found the Sybill, and all but whimpered, "Please. It... it wasn't my fault."

"Who said it was?" Tigre said. He had missed one leper, and the one was close enough to whisper in his ear. The rest of the lepers stepped forward, their faces solemn but otherwise almost emotionless.

"I'm sure Austin's all right," Chacha said. Wichita looked abruptly up from the stove, and then smiled, but not quickly enough to hide a flinch.

"Mama," said Bell, "what was the sound?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure it's nothing to worry about," her mother assured her. "Why, I bet it's blocks away."

"Really?" Chacha nodded, and smiled a little too wide. Krista returned the smile as she brought the first bowl of ramen.

"So," Wichita said as she say down, "if it's not too personal... what happened with her daddy?"

"Who's my Daddy?" Bell said.

"Shooter's up high, back to the north, between 100 and 300 meters," Tigre said calmly. "Probably alone. He will be counting on the body drawing more zombies. In maybe half an hour, he will change positions."

"...Then we can grab the body," Columbus said.

"What for?" said the Sybil. He stared at her.

"Don't- don't you bury your dead? I mean, you can't just..."

"Burial?" said Ketch. "Eh, not so much..." Now Columbus gaped in disgust.

"Without the soul, all flesh is but flesh," the Sibyl said. "Each may choose his own."

"Your Daddy's gone, honey. Gone a long time," Chacha said. Then, meeting Wichita's concerned gaze, she added, "He... In a lot of ways, he was wonderful, but his problems were... _big_ problems. He needed help, and I made sure he got it, but that meant, he never saw me again. Or Bell, ever." Bell gave a puzzled look as her mother's eyes teared up.

"But enough about me," she said, with another smile that was a little too wide. "I know... Why not tell me about your foster sister? Or... Do you have any pictures?"

Columbus looked to Luna. She was rising back to her feet, her face as stern as the others."Then what about the shooter?" he said, taking out a hand mirror. "We don't have to hide. He's just a poacher- hunting off the grid, and not even doing it right. Poachers use mirrors like these for signals. If I flash him, he will run. If one or a few of us double back, we could catch him."

He looked meaningfully at Tigre, who only shrugged and said, "Then what?"

"Well, I could think of something," Ketch said, "but we aren't that hard up for food."

Wichita smiled. "Funny you should mention it... For a longest time, we only had one picture of each other, that our foster parents took when she was 9 and I was 17. Then- _after-_ we decided to get a digital camera, you know, make a record of history, like anyone gave a- I mean, in case people ever tried to find out what happened. So, we took lots of pictures, only, we couldn't look at them. Then Columbus found us a little printer in one of the stores, and we printed a whole album..." She took out a book, and started to chatter, wrapped up enough that she did not register the subtle shock on Chacha's face.

"He killed your sister," Columbus said, looking to Luna. "Given the chance, he would kill all of you. Even if he knew you were lepers, he might do it. And what he did isn't right even against zombies. We have rules..."

"When blood is shed, the only rule is that blood cries for more blood!" the Sibyl declared caustically. "That is why your rules do not stay those you call `poachers' from slaying. Many _Hermanos _have fallen, and no amount of blood will bring them back. No, it would only bring more blood. We know better than to expect justice, and we have more important things to do." And with no further comment, she turned and walked to the west.

"Your husband," Chacha said, "he's wonderful, isn't he?"

"Oh, yeah," Wichita said with a sly smile. "You know, I think he and A- I mean, Little Rock hit it off even faster than we did. I mean, there were arguments, pranks, maybe a couple all-out fights, but they always knew they were in it together... He gets nervous around kids- he told me one of his phobias is being alone with a baby- but they love him. I don't think he realizes how much, unless that's what makes him nervous." She rubbed her belly.

Chacha patted her shoulder. "I'm sure he's okay."

Wichita smiled again, a little wistfully, gazing up through the camper window, paying little heed to how Chacha looked at the photo album. "I_ know_ he is. Maybe that's why I worry, because of how good he's gotten at taking care of himself. I love it, I really do, but sometimes I feel a little..."

"Redundant?" Chacha said. "Yeah, I know how it is. You'll know a heck of a lot more when that baby's out of you."

"Anyway," Wichita said, straightening a bit, "if he can't take care of himself, the people he's with sure can."

The man's is unimportant. _He_ is unimportant. That, ultimately, is why he happens to be "poaching" zombies beyond the frontier of inhabited Vegas. He was an interchangeable cog in some bygone bureaucratic machine, who found casual blood-letting in the capacity of a casino deputy a refreshing change of pace. But ever since the arrival of Columbus, an ever-growing set of rules has cut in on what had been a cathartic, care-free exercise: No engagements at over 100 m or under 30; no following zombies into cover; no departures from authorized routes or missions; confirming, documenting and cleaning up every kill, or no killing at all. It is getting almost as bad as his old job. And so he, like any number of men with essentially the same stories, has turned to hunting in secret, to fulfill a primal need for challenge, or danger, or simply for killing as an end unto itself.

And now, he is fearful. He does not know why his latest kill brought a terrible scream with it, and he most assuredly does not want to find out. He wants to be far away, very quickly, but he cannot let his hurry override the instinct of stealth. He knows, as he pedals away on an electric moped, that he has both the zombies, which he can already hear foraging in the dark, and the casino sentries to fear. Unfortunately, he is unaware that much greater dangers are much closer at hand, until a casual swing of a nightstick catches him in the throat.

The voice he hears is deep for a woman's, and soft for a man's: "You picked a bad night to be out, and you made it a lot worse." He starts to rise, gripping his moped for support. Then there is a thunk, a whiz, and a metallic crunch as a small, sharp arrow pins his right wrist to the gear box. He starts to scream, but stifles the cry, biting his lip until it bleeds. "That's being smart. First time today."

There is a rustle as a weapon is folded and stowed. "I'd really just as soon wrap this up quick," the androgynous voice says. Now shuffling feet are drawing closer. "But, it seems to me there's a _point_ that needs to be made. If it helps, you could think of this as fair shake. I mean, you could pull free. Or, if you can get to that pistol in your ankle holster, you can at least do a self-checkout." The departing figure's footsteps are drowned out by the feet that are now close indeed, and running. He reaches for the arrow, but the shaft is too deep to get a grip. Then, as the first of the zombies come in to view, he strains to reach his right calf with his left hand.

Lagertijo cried out to Conejo with obvious joy. The Sibyl had quietly announced that they were drawing near a place that would be their refuge for the evening. Columbus was still in the dark where or what it was, but they were clearly close. Even as the lepers walked faster, he stopped in his tracks, once again almost getting rear-ended by Tuerto. "Did you hear a shot?" he said.

"No," Jack Ketch said. "Now get a move on."

Columbus took one more suspicious look around. "Where's Tigre?"

"Already here!" the White Tiger called out impatiently.


	15. Brothers don't tell

**This chapter comes in several parts. There's a little fluff, then a development of a backstory I gave in the ebook version of "Fear and Loafing" but never posted here before, with a short treatment of an idea for a "Neville" vignette. And there's no way I'm giving any hints about the end of the chapter...**

Krista winced as the baby kicked. Chacha patted her hand. "It's okay. It means your baby's healthy. And you're tough."

"This is- different," she said, grimacing at a continuing pain. "Usually, it's one, maybe two or three kicks. I got used to that- got to kinda like it, matter of fact. But this... It's like my little guy's practicing a hat dance." Bell giggled. "Yeah, sure, go ahead and laugh. Just be nice to your mama, 'cause she went through a hell of a lot." After a moment's thought, Bell gave Chacha a hug.

"Now it's getting a little better," Krista said, rubbing her abdomen. "I wonder what set that off... Mm, by the way, this is Sammy, and definitely a boy. After we got the ultrasound, we talked about whether to find out. I told my hubby it would be a good excuse to decline more gifts... Sammy, I can't wait to hold you in my arms, 'cause you're really starting to crowd me in there."

"Better be careful about talk like that," Chacha said. "In a few years, even a few months, you're going to see there's no such thing as not growing up fast enough." Wichita nodded, leaning back and gazing up through the window. Chacha patted her hand again. "I'm sure he's fine."

The building looked like a hotel: a sprawling L, with an ornamented tower. Columbus was startled, and then angry, to see the truth: "It's a hospital! Still standing!" He glared at Jack Ketch. "I almost died- Krista almost died- taking Sunrise Hospital, and the whole time you had this, here? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because Clan Tweedle had to go down," Ketch said, "and the hospital was the only place where you could do it."

"Yeah, that's true," Tigre said, "but what it really comes to is, if you had known about this, you would have tried to come."

"Then what do you do with it?" Columbus said. "Are any of your people able to use it?"

"I know a bit," said Tigre.

"I can," Ketch said.

Columbus's eyes widened, then narrowed. "You never said you were a doctor."

"I wasn't," the leper said. "But I got a crash course from a nurse."

"Is she still here?" Columbus said.

Tigre laughed. "Remember Alice?" he said. "She was Jack's partner." Columbus stared.

"It wasn't _anything _like that," Jack said tersely. "I went to Desert Sunrise, with my wife and my kids... Three of us were bitten. I found my wife on top of Alice. I pulled her off, then Alice talked me through first aid... and a transfusion of my own blood."

Columbus's eyes widened again. "There's stories... stories that lepers' blood could cure the disease."

"Not a cure," Ketch said. "Not even prevention. Just a way to change the outcome... if you're in time... and if you're bloody lucky."

"Right," said Tigre, "not that anyone ever took our word for it."

Ketch sighed. "I worked with Alice for six weeks... first at Sunrise, then here, finding fresh infections, and doing what we could. We tried the blood transfusion thing, mine and hers, twenty-three times. Never made a difference."

"The army tried the same thing," Tigre said kindly. "They _said_ they had a prophylactic that worked _almost _one time in ten."

"By the end, we couldn't get to anyone in time anyway," Ketch said. "We talked, and talked, and I finally convinced her to try telling someone what we were doing. We tried the nevilles first. Eventually, we found someone who didn't either run away or shoot at us. She asked to see what we had done. We took her here... and then the way in she hit me over the head with a mallet and chained me to a water main. Alice... She wasn't so lucky.

"It turned out that this woman's son had been bitten, and she and her boyfriend got him chained to a radiator. I found her guy, after, shot point blank and stuffed in a drain pipe behind their apartment building. My guess is, he had second thoughts about keeping the kid. She took Alice to the apartment, and looted this place. This crazy * bled her... for days. When transfusions didn't work, the nev just took more blood. Then she cut off Alice's finger, and fed it to the boy. That was when she finally got bit. It was a fast burn, and when she turned, she went for the boy. I got there after five days. Killed the bat, untied Alice, found the surprise in the back, got Alice back here, gave her enough aid to save her life, again. Finally, I went to sleep, and when I woke up, she was gone."

"...And that," Tigre said, "is why we have rules. We don't make contact. We don't let ourselves be seen. And we don't `help' without a very good reason."

"What about _padrinos_?" Columbus said.

Both lepers got a look that was almost a wince. It was Tigre who answered: "Each protects his own." Then both retreated into the dark.

Columbus stalked unsteadily through the hospital. He found Luna, crouching silently, and staring at nothing. He wanted to try to comfort her, but one look took his voice away. He backed out, taking a look back, and in the corner of his eye he saw Tuerto, once again plodding up from behind. He was trembling as he moved on. Then he was aware of someone alongside him, without any idea how she got there. "She does not blame you," said Sibyl.

"That doesn't mean it wasn't my fault," he said.

"And what could you have done differently?" Sibyl countered

"If she hadn't been talking to me, she would have paid more attention," he said.

"Perhaps, but you wouldn't have, and you would have been in front," Sybill said. "And that is the real problem, isn't it? You resent being saved."

"Well, why shouldn't I?" he blurted out. "I never asked for help! I certainly never asked for anyone to- to- "

"-Die for you?" He nodded, sudden tears in his eyes. "You would rather have died for her?" He cast down his eyes. "That is backhanded selfishness. You think you are the only one who can way your own worth, and you act as if your life counted for you alone. If you had died in Estrella's place, how do you think she would feel, knowing that her survival meant leaving Peliroja a widow, and your unborn son fatherless, and her own _alma gemela_ with the burden of caring for them? No, Samaritan. Have peace, and accept that yours is a life worth living."

She started to walk ahead, until he spoke: "There is something else!" She turned back.

"Is there?"

"There _is_ a traitor," he said. "Probably in this party. You know it. I'm pretty sure I know who it is."

"You do not know what you speak of. I will hear nothing more," Sibyl said.

"Don't you understand?" Columbus said. "The deadliest people alive are out there, trained and armed by the most powerful military in the world to stalk and kill undetected. It took the three most dangerous people _I_ ever met to kill _one _of them. There's more out there, and they won't be sloppy. We don't have a prayer. We have even less of a chance with one of their people in the middle." He indignantly wiped away tears that welled in his eyes.

"Have peace," she said, firmly gripping his shoulder. "You _must_ have _peace_. You think you know what is true, what is best. But do even you really believe it? The poachers think they know how to hunt better than you do, and they are wrong. Are you so much wiser, that you can judge an _Hermano_ better than we can ourselves? And those men, out there, they think they know everything. They have airplanes, satellites, laser sights, night vision goggles, but they seal themselves in their `stealth' suits from the very winds that could tell them all they need to know. They are like a man who studies Van Gogh by analyzing flakes of paint with a chemistry set. Do you think you have more information than they do?"

Suddenly, she raised her hand to brush his curls, and he saw a tear running down her own cheek. "Samaritan... my Samaritan... Why must it be so hard for you to learn? You do not know everything, and neither do those you fear. You see a part, a tiny piece, a fragment of a piece. Some see more, some see less. Me, I see just enough to know that no mortal mind will ever fathom the whole."

His eyes, half-closed, sprang wide open. "You know," he said. "You know who the traitor is!"

For once, Sibyl looked surprised, and dismayed. "If I say yes or no, you will only try to guess," she said. "Right or wrong, you will only do harm. Have peace, please. Have _trust_, in me."

"Why?" he said. "Because you're being so reasonable? What are you even saying? That you could know someone is betraying you, and not say anything about it?"

"_Hermanos _don't ask," she said, "and _Hermanos _don't tell."

He took a step back, all but gaping. "That... that's just messed up."

"Perhaps I might say it this way," she said. "We _Hermanos_, as much as it suits us to appear otherwise, we do not know the answers to every question. What we are good at is asking the right question. It is a skill, Samaritan, which you would do well to practice. Suppose, for example, there is a traitor. Why not ask, not who he- or, perhaps, she- is, but how much of a threat the traitor really is? More than those who corrupted him? More than those who sent them? Greater... than another traitor?"

"What... what the * are you talking about?" he said, suddenly weary, drowsy and dizzy, sure that it was the Sibyl's doing, yet somehow not unduly angry about it.

"Peace, Samaritan," she said, pressing a finger to his forehead. "Have peace. And know... you will hold your son in your arms."

He returned to awareness, not at the sound, but at the lingering vibration of a gunshot. He was on his feet in an instant. Running down the hall, he stumbled as he turned on two bodies: Juan, stunned, and Tuerto, dead with an arrow in his throat. At the next corner lay Jaime, without obvious wounds but unmistakably dead, his rifle still in his hands, pointed in the direction of a splash of blood on a facing wall. The scent of powder was heavy, but did not cover a striking chemical smell, remembered well from the gear they had found at the Boulevard. As running steps and shouts and Luna's scream came up behind him, it was already clear what had happened. The Sibyl was gone, _taken_. And somehow he knew that Tigre had vanished with her.


	16. Suspicions

**A new, short chapter, pretty much just "segue"; I also added a little to chapter 12.**

The halls of the hospital buzzed with conversation, calls and outright argument. All that were left in the party were gathered: Juan, still dizzy from a blow to the head; Luna, crouching by Jaime's dead body, murmuring what sounded like a prayer; Ketch and Quijano, examining the slain Tuerto; Lagertijo and Conejo, speaking to each other in short bursts of Spanish; and Boca and Columbus, who alone were silent. Nothing was said about the conspicuous absence of Tigre.

"This had to be some kinda crossbow, fired by a pro- they say the crossbow's been under consideration as a special forces weapon for decades," Ketch said. "The arrow went through the jugular and the windpipe, and it looks like it stuck in the spine. Tuerto would have been lucky if he knew what hit him."

"But he must have saw _el arquero_," Quijano said. "If he looked the other way, the _flecha_ go in _vertebral_, not in _garganta_."

"Right," Ketch said. "So, he could have heard Juan go down, turned around, but the other man shot faster."

"I do not see," Quijano remarked. "How could the same man hit Juan and shoot Tuerto? Swing _la_ _ballesta_ likeclub? I see them, and they are no solids. And why not shoot Juan? He had the gun."

"Simple, he didn't want to shoot anyone he didn't have to," Ketch countered.

"Then why shoot Tuerto?"

"To stop him from calling for help, of course."

"What, a guy who shoots that good cannot knock out an unarmed man less than five meters away? Hey, and how would he even be ready to shoot? Who swings a cock and loaded _ballesta_ around like a _bandito _with a _pistola_?" Ketch frowned.

Columbus bent over Jaime, who was slumped still upright against the wall. He opened the leper's shirt, and saw a small wound, little more than a welt, on his left breast. Leaning in, he saw a broken capsule lodged halfway under the skin, and smelled a very faint chemical odor. A shadow loomed over him, and he looked over his shoulder to see Boca. The mute leper pointed to the rifle, then to the splash of blood on the wall, which was high on the wall and even a bit of the ceiling. He nodded. "There were at least three attackers," he said. "One shot Tuerto with a bow. Another shot Jaime with a lethal dart, from the same direction. A third was moving in from the side, after Jaime was already down, when Jaime got him with a parting shot. The upward angle is what sent the spatter so high."

"How fast do those darts act?" Ketch asked.

"The tranquilizer darts cause unconsciousness in 10 to 15 seconds. They're the ones with the strong smell. The lethal ones will bring someone down for good in five."

"So, let's say two guys come in from the corridor. Big John's looking the other way, bam. Tuerto looks, catches the arrow. The second shooter uses his gun, puts Sibyl to sleep and shoots Jaime, prob'ly in that order. Then more guys- let's say at least two- arrive from another direction, grab Sibyl, and one of them catches a .30-.06. All that, literally in seconds."

"But why kill Tuerto?" Quijano wondered.

"How they get in?" Luna asked.

"There was an unlocked door down the hall," Ketch said. "Not forced, unlocked. It could have been picked from outside."

"But it was no," Luna said.

"Probably not."

Lagertijo jabbered in excitement, holding up what looked like a fat pen. Except, on closer inspection, there were two holes at one end: muzzles for a tiny dart gun. "That settle it," Quijano said. "An arm like that is for spies, not soldiers. One shooter was a traitor." He looked to Ketch.

"No," he said. "I _know _it isn't him."

"I don't say it is," Quijano said, "but nobody can deny what it looks like."

"Sibyl never trusted him," Jaime said. "She called him _alma rota_- a broken, split soul. He made her sad. I think she feared him. But she never feared he would betray her."

"Maybe they take him along with her," Luna suggested.

"No," said Columbus.

"I'm sure he never betrayed us," Ketch said, "but I would believe that sooner than I'd believe he could be taken. At least not without a lot more bodies."

"Look," Columbus said, "what Tigre did and what happened to him doesn't need to matter. What's important is that the Sibyl has been captured, and this time, we're not just at the scene, we have a trail to follow: As long as one of them has an open wound, he can be tracked by scent alone, and if we aren't on the trail, the zombies will be."

"Unless they just kill him," Luna said cynically.

"No," Columbus said, more firmly than before. "That's not how these kinds of people work. These aren't infantry grunts, they're elite troops, highly trained and uniquely experienced. Just a simple cost-benefits analysis would dictate that, if there's the slightest chance of getting one of them out alive, it should be taken. What's even more important is what they stand for. An elite unit needs to keep a high level of morale. They need to feel unified. They need to uphold a tradition. Leaving one of their own to die, or even leaving his body, would do the reverse."

"There's a practical side, too," Ketch said. "When they take greater risks just to recover one man, it sends a message to the enemy: Take one of ours, and there will be consequences."

"...But what if they leave the hurt man behind to pick him up later?" said Quijano.

"That would make the most sense," Ketch said. "He could break away from the rest and draw away any pursuit- even lead them into a trap."

Columbus nodded. "We watch for something like that, then. Either way, we'd stand to gain: If we can't get the Sibyl, we might get a hostage."

"... Which means the others come after him," Ketch said.

"If those are the consequences, then it's better than knowing nothing at all."

"Sure, and what we don't know I'm sure we'll find out real fast."


	17. Losses

"Aw, * no," Ketch said.

Columbus looked only a moment longer. "Agreed." They looked out on the place where the trail ended, a few blocks west of the hospital: a golf course, surrounded by houses, obviously the perfect location for an ambush.

"Now what?" Ketch said. "Go back?"

"No," Columbus said, "get smarter."

The gate to the residential development was padlocked. Boca made short work of the lock with a massive bolt cutter. Conejo started to open the gate, but Quijano gripped his shoulder, gently scolding in Spanish. Ketch smiled. "Notice, even Quixote isn't keen on going in here," he said. Conejo took a closer look, and smiled. He unfolded a tiny pair of sewing scissors, and slowly snipped at the air. There was a slight twang, and Conejo bounded aside as a spray of buckshot hit the gate. "And there goes the element of surprise."

Columbus jogged in, keeping pace with Conejo. A short distance away was a two-story clubhouse. Conejo ran ahead, and there were four pops and a sudden chemical smell. Columbus dropped behind a car. Jack Ketch arrived right behind him. He waved for the other lepers to stay back. As Columbus unshouldered Jaime's .30-.06, he looked at Ketch. "You ever do any shooting?"

Ketch pointed to his Union Jack shirt. "Hello? Ever heard about gun control? Not if you don't know about where I come from." Columbus nodded and took aim at a patch of darkness on the roof. He blinked at the flash, but saw a shower of debris as a bullet hit shingles. He ducked at another pop, this time without a noticeable scent. He glanced around the other side of the car, and caught a hint of a darting figure approaching the clubhouse from the other side.

"Get ready," he said. Even as he spoke, there was a sudden sound of struggle. As he ran up to the clubhouse, there were two pops and the sharp smell of tranquilizer, then Lagertijo came hurtling limply down from the roof. Columbus did not look back to see him land, but heard a grisly snap. He reached the other end of the clubhouse, just as a black-clad figure jogged out the exit, clearly wounded. "Freeze," he said firmly. The warrior halted, then kicked back, knocking the rifle from Columbus's hands literally before he knew what was happening. Virtually in the same motion, the "wounded" warrior pivoted, bringing a gun to bear. Then a flash and a roar left him blinded.

"Guns," he could barely hear Ketch mutter. "Bright, dirty, noisy, smelly _guns_." Through flashing spots, Columbus stared at the leper, the rifle in his hands, and the bloody hole in the warrior's facemask. The leper looked like he was about to drop the gun, until he jerked it back up abruptly, at about the same time as Columbus felt rather than heard an impact on the pavement. He turned to see the barely discernible shape of a crouching figure, already raising a weapon. He did the only thing he could: He stepped between Ketch and the warrior, holding out open hands. The warrior holstered the gun and rose, lunging for the fallen comrade. Then both were gone.

"What the bloody 'ell," Ketch said, "that was the one who killed Lagertijo!"

"He didn't want to," Columbus said. "He didn't want to kill you, either, but he was going to. I gave him a chance to walk away."

"You think they won't come back?" Ketch exclaimed. "After this?"

"They took all of their own back with them," Columbus said, "That's the only thing that was going to _stop _them."

They were somber as they met the rest of the party. Boca carried Lagertijo in one arm, and had the other arm around Quijano, who wept openly. Conejo followed, his face strangely blank. But the most painful sight was Luna, who met his gaze with a defiant stare, and in that moment it seemed like he was looking at Krista. While others grouped around Ketch, who purposefully stepped in front, she went straight to Columbus. "I'm sorry," he said. She responded with a backhanded slap.

"No speak no such thing!" she shouted. Only then did tears well in her eyes. "Lagertijo would have died happy, only for to get the Sibyl a chance to go free! All of us would do the same! And all of us would die for you, for you save our Sibyl, and for you have the heart of Peliroja. Never no talk like we no cannot give lifes with no regret! But that no important. I stay with Lagertijo, till he go over the wall. He find for me another trail."

"Of what? Another soldier?" Columbus said. "Of the Sibyl?"

"No," she said, "de Tigre."


	18. Miracle Mile

**Here's another subplot, which is actually the one I plan to be the "climax" of this hodgepodge. As usual, the location is real, and ludicrously overresearched. And, Wyland is a name I recognized on researching the location, and the closing gag here is not intended to show any disrespect to his work or the causes he supports.**

Krista emerged from her camper, defiantly dressed in her most garish pair of sweatpants, which happened to be a shade of purple. Detroit and Sydney were standing outside. "Holy *, you look like an eggplant!" Sydney exclaimed.

"Don't knock it till you've been knocked up," she countered. She looked around curiously. The Terrible's parking lot was crowded and busy. At least 20 vehicles were being prepped for the day's duties. "Hey, what's going on?"

_"`What's going on?'" _came the bellow of Chief Sahara from one row down. Normally as restrained socially as he was strategically, he was now red-faced with anger. "Didn't you or your husband pay attention to the last briefing? We're taking Planet Hollywood! Oh, and that camper is my command and control post!"

"Right," Sydney said, "so if you left anything out that you don't want to be general knowledge, you have about five minutes to put it away." She hurriedly ducked back inside.

Wichita the Tremors truck to the north end of the casino, with Sydney riding shotgun and Chief Sahara, Detroit and Bruce in the camper. By the time they, work crews were already clearing away rubble and wreckage from the entrances. Reaching the complex had required full-sized bulldozers, backhoes and cranes to get through the rubble of Caesar's Palace. Now, however, the work required less brute force and more maneuverability. Thus, while a crane was on hand for removing cars and very large pieces of rubble, most of the work was being done with Bobcat light construction equipment. The work horses were a pair of tractors, four smaller skid loaders and a tracked compact excavator. A forklift-like vehicle called a telehandler took care of heavier lifting. Very close-in work was done with mini-loaders, contraptions that looked like a cross between a bulldozer and a lawnmower, which operators did not so much ride in as follow behind.

Planet Hollywood was, under the circumstances, miraculously intact. Most of the damage had been to the front facade, collateral damage from an uncertain disaster (the strongest theory being the crash of a military ground-attack aircraft) that had demolished the Bellagio across the street. Virtually every window had been broken, pieces of sheet metal and masonry had fallen off, and in places the wall had buckled, but none of it had threatened the basic integrity of the casino. But that was a major concern, for the casino included Mirale Mile Shops, the third largest mall in Vegas.

Chief Sahara used magnets to hang a map on the side of the camper. "Like I was saying, Planet Hollywood's a different ballgame from anything we've dealt with before. Based on external observation, we know there is an infestation, but we can't get a read on the numbers involved. We also have evidence of human activity. It's probably nevilles dug in somewhere, which would make things touchy enough, but it could be poachers, looters or even a leper colony." He all but glowered at Krista. "No matter what you hear otherwise, lepers are to be presumed a threat. If they want to be nice, let them prove it."

Workmen shouted in alarm as a zombie emerged from a half-covered crevasse near the base of the stairs to the south entrance. The excavator and a skid loader were at work, pouring fine debris onto the steps to turn them into a usable ramp for the telehandler to move up to remove a fallen girder blocking the entrance. The zombie roared as the excavator's cab swiveled, then, just as the zombie charged, the jaws of the machine's bucket closed on its head. "That'll do for zombie kill of the week," Krista said.

"While the south entrance is being cleared, I'm sending a team through the north entrance for reconnaissance in force," he said. He pointed to a nearer staircase, where a mini-loader with a saw attachment was being brought into position to cut through a crowd control barrier. "Detroit will be leading, and Sydney will accompany him as liaison for TI. A call has been sent out for volunteers- yes, Ms. Kansas?"

"I volunteer," Krista said.

"Request respectfully denied," Sahara said.

"Chief, might I remind you that I was given the job of overseeing contact with nevilles? If some of them are in there, I should be, too."

"I can choose, at my discretion, who goes in with our team," Sahara almost hissed. "My absolutely final decision is- you don't."

"Just to clarify- does that mean I can choose who accompanies me as assistants to the TI liaison?" Sydney said.

"Yes," said Sahara.

"Okay," Sydney said, "Kansas- you're in."

Detroit went in with a dozen deputies, followed by Sydney, Wichita, Strangelove and the infamous gunsmith Q. The mall was shaped somewhat like a soda can tab: A rectangle that was part of the casino proper and a circle that was the enormous performing-arts theater, with the corridors of the mall winding around them. Sahara's plan, unambitious as always, was to cross the near end of the ring and then meet the main party at the south entrance.

Like the Paris casino, Miracle Mile's builders had given their creation a fake blue sky, and dressed up the walls as storefronts. The trick was even less convincing here, though at least the lights were still on. Somewhere down the corridor, music was playing. "Somebody's been taking care of this place," Krista said.

She looked around her. The shops at this end were all women's jewelry, clothing and other luxuries. At the moment, the only one that held any appeal to her was the large Sephora beauty/ bath and body store on her right. Two lithe female deputies- she was fairly certain they were a renowned pair of sisters from the Circus's original trapeze performers- looked even less impressed. One pointed, but did not make a sound, at movement in a dark corner. Then a shape came lurching forth, as the other sister darted forward. One impossibly high kick sent the zombie down with its nasal bone up its nose. Krista paused to take a look at the zombie. It was a woman in sagging clothes, and Krista quickly reconstructed her as she would have been before- matronly but not quite elderly, and overweight but not quite fat. "Hey," Sydney said, "no stopping to look at merchandise."

Detroit ordered a halt at the intersection of the entrance hall with the loop of the main corridor, setting up a base camp in a coffee shop. The group waited in tense silence as the sisters went forward to reconnoiter. The pair returned, looking puzzled. "There's nothing between here and the south entrance," said one. "And if there's none there, then there's probably none at all."

"But... the guys watching this place... the evidence was rock solid," he said. "They found sound signatures, heat signatures, even scent indicators... all consistent with an infestation by multiple packs at least."

The other sister shrugged. "Maybe there's some, in here somewhere... but if there are, they aren't in the mall area."

"I don't like this," Detroit said. "I don't like this one bit. I'm calling it... abort."

The deputies began shouldering gear, but Krista laughed. "I'm sorry... sorry, sir.. but- c'mon, seriously. We came in here to hunt zombies, and now we're bailing out because we haven't seen any?"

"If we can see them, we know we can kill them," said one of the sisters. "If we can see evidence of them, we know we can find them. But if we can't tell if they're around or not, then who knows what might happen?"

"Hold it," Sydney said. "Do what you want with your people, but I want to look around."

"Fine," Detroit said, then ordered the sisters, "Cam, Connie, stay with him."

"What do you want to see?" Krista asked, already suspecting the answer.

"Mostly, I want to see what's making that music," Sydney said. She nodded.

They moved reasonably cautiously, but quickly, and Krista was personally caught by complete surprise when they rounded a turn to find a dozen zombies in their path. The music was blaring, and colored lights were flashing, which was presumably why the zombies were turning around as they arrived. Fortunately, the others were not equally surprised. The sisters went right into action, and Sydney paused only long enough to draw a rock hammer before charging. Only one got near her, as she reached much too late for her stockless Mossberg. Strangelove drew a silenced .25, but Q was faster with a spring-loaded weapon called the boing stick. The weapon fired a large rubber slug that knocked the zombie off its feet. The zombie was still skidding when Sydney lunged in and struck it on the forehead.

The lights were coming from a fountain in front of the theater. The lights, the music and the fountain's jets of water were all in time, in the dramatic finish to an elaborate show. "What... the..." Krista bit her lip and clasped her belly.

"Okay," Sydney said, "_now_ I'm ready to bug out."

One of the sisters flipped through a packet of briefing materials. "When the mall was running, there were shows at this fountain every hour," she said. "It could be on a timer."

"_What_ times?" Sydney said caustically.

"Noon to eleven."

"Yeah, and it's 7:30 in the morning," Sydney said. "Yesiree, I'm getting out of here, but I'll at least finish the circuit."

"It's the nevilles," Krista said to nobody in particular. "They could be hiding behind the scenes. If they found the right controls, they could run the fountain any time with the push of a button. They could do it to control where the zombies are going, or just for fun... they might watch through the security cameras..." She halted, realizing that Sydney was no longer in the lead. Then she gasped and pumped the gun as thunderous, seemingly insane laughter roared through the corridor.

They found Sydney in front of a small but very elegant shop front, literally bent over with laughter that had to be loud and clear to anyone in the mall. The sign said Wyland Galleries, and the items on display were beautiful paintings and sculptures of whales. Sydney looked at her, pointing and wheezing unintelligibly. She looked, and saw what he was pointing at.

A sign just inside the store said, _Help save the whales!_


	19. Pursuit

"We follow for hours," Luna said in frustration. "Trail goes here, there, stops and starts and stops, but it never goes to nothing!" She dropped to her knees against a fence around an overgrown golf course.

"Tigre knows we're on to him," Ketch said. "He's leading us in circles, playing with us."

"Maybe he is leading us to a trap?" Quijano said in alarm.

"So, suddenly he's starting to look good for the traitor?" Columbus said rhetorically. Luna glared at Ketch, and he responded with a hiss. Columbus braced himself, ready for one to come at the other or at him. Then, mercifully, Conejo interrupted with a shout. He leaped halfway up the fence, pointing and shouting. Ketch jumped onto the hood of a car to see what was inside.

"Well," he said, "I think this counts as something." Inside the fence, a 30-foot circle of over-tall, sun-bleached grass had been flattened.

"This was where they took Sibyl," Columbus said. "They had a helicopter here."

Quijano frowned. "But an 'elicopter es no quiete. We could have heard it for blocks."

"Maybe they have, like, stealth," Luna said. "Area 51, * like that."

"Only if they're bloody morons," Ketch said. "Real pros don't hand out exotic equipment to field operatives. Like, if you give somebody a gun, you don't give a super-sophisticated top-secret gun, you give him one anybody could get at a local pawnshop. And if you build a stealth helicopter you find a way to do it with off-the-shelf parts." The others looked at him curiously. "My old man was SAS, okay? You better believe he couldn't sit through a Bond movie."

"It could be done," Columbus said. "You could cut a lot of the noise just replacing the tail rotor with a NOTAR unit. Maybe fit a non-standard main rotor, with more blades, or larger ones, or both, that could move slower while generating the same lift…"

"Yes, right," Ketch said. "Well, if nobody's here, why don't we move on?" Their group fell back into a ragged column, but he and Columbus stayed back. Ketch spoke first: "Now some of them are doubting Tigre. Are you happy now?"

Columbus shook his head. "Tigre isn't innocent," he said, "but he's not the traitor."

"Really? Why d'you say that?"

"If he were assigned to spy on us, he would have stayed with us," Columbus said.

"Good thinking. Nice to see some for a change."

"Jack," Columbus asked, "how did you know he hadn't betrayed us?"

"A lot of reasons," Ketch answered, "but first and foremost... You wouldn't." Columbus started to sputter another question, but Ketch held up a hand for silence. "Don't stop. Let's go around this corner, keep walking, keep walking... Gimme that plinky gun." Columbus handed over his .22/.410 without question. Looking over his shoulder, he glimpsed a shimmer in the air. Then Ketch let fly with the .410, and the shimmer became a shower of debris. "Now we run."

"You said you couldn't shoot!" Columbus said.

Ketch shrugged. "I say lots of things." He thrust the gun back into Columbus's hands. "Keep going!"

"You have to tell me," Columbus panted as they rounded another corner, "what did you mean about-?"

"GO!" Ketch shouted, shoving Columbus down an alley. He kept running down the first path, then ducked into another alley. Moments later, he peered out of another alley, behind the one he had pushed Columbus into. He held a machete-like gurkha blade, and with the other hand he drew a much smaller knife from the same scabbard. "Nobody," he muttered, "leaves Jack to walk away." Then he pivoted and ducked, throwing the small knife at a figure crouching in the shadows behind him. It bounced off a wall close to the figure's head, throwing out a spray of sparks. His opponent visibly flinched, and he lunged in, drawing a third knife. That was when he felt a slight sting, and smelled a faint chemical odor. He staggered, and the visible warrior casually swatted his main weapon from his hand. He stood in place, twitching, still slowly and strenuously raising his remaining knife. The warrior took a couple cautious steps back. _"Nobody,"_ Ketch hissed, and then thrust the knife into his own leg.

Columbus leaned against a wall, his hands pressed to his temples. He could just barely bring himself to look at his five remaining companions. "This... It's... Look, we're done. It's obvious I can't help you. As long as Jack was here, I thought I might still manage, but now... Just go. I'll go back home. It's what Sibyl wanted."

"And what about us, Samaritan?" Quijano asked. "Do you want us to leave our brothers and sisters imprisoned?"

"Whatever you do," Columbus said, "your chances are better without me."

"Samaritan," Conejo said, and Columbus looked at him in surprise. The boy continued in simple but clear English, "Our Sibyl believed you were worth saving. We believe you can save us."

"Do you think it matters what you believe?" Columbus said.

"Not as much as what you believe," Luna said. He sighed.

"Look, I... I need a little time alone." The lepers silently withdrew. He looked up, and around, and finally said, "I know you're here. I know you're innocent. You can come out now."

He started when a voice came in his ear. "About time," Tigre said.


	20. Angels of Death

**Another segue chapter,, with a few reveals I was working up to... I decided it was a little easier for me to call Columbus by the alternate name I thought up for "Shoe Shopping", and use in my "Zombie Vegas" ebooks to somewhat reduce the likelihood of being sued. Also, I came up with another possible casting for Tigre: James Lafferty, as seen in "S. Darko". I also thought of Tigre while I was watching footage of Tim Treadwell in "Grizzly Man" over the weekend. I think, if there's any actual person I have seen with all the qualities I picture in Tigre, it would be the extremely deceased Mr. Treadwell.**

Austin warily stepped back from Tigre, his hand pointedly on his survival carbine. Tigre's eyes flicked lazily to the weapon. "You know, I decided a long time ago, that there's three kinds of killing," he said. "There's killing someone you're sure is trying to kill you. There's killing someone you're sure is not trying to kill you. Then there's killing someone when you know they might try to kill you, or might not. It's the last one, I think, that's hardest to do, and it's even harder to live with."

"What happened to Tuerto?" Austin said.

Tigre gave a shrug, and a hint of a smile. "I shot him, of course."

Austin only nodded. "He was the traitor."

"Yeah. I thought you might figure that out."

"You knew? And you didn't do anything?" Austin said.

"Sibyl knew before I did, and she didn't do anything about him either. Would you blame her too?"

"That was her way," Austin said, "not yours."

"All right, fair enough. I knew it was Tuerto, and normally I would have taken him out, but then that would have cost me my best lead on the ones who sent him."

"What do you know about them?"

"You're dealing with eighteen of them," Tigre said. "They deploy in groups of twenty, divided into four teams. Rendition Team does the work. There's four of them, three now. Extraction Team secures a perimeter, and provides transport. That's six. C & C Team- that's Command and Control- are basically support. That's another six: the group commander, a communications officer, and four more guys to provide security and general grunt work. The last four are the Recon Team. They are the ones who locate targets, and they are the best of the best. The one clan Tweedle took out was Recon. There's ways to tell, if you know what to look for."

"And how would you know?" Austin asked, then answered himself: "You were one of them, weren't you?"

Tigre laughed. "Them? They're the B team."

After a prolonged silence, Austin said, "So, I suppose you lied about being a medic."

"Oh, I was a medic. I had a * Em-Dee," Tigre said. "And yes, I'm _quite_ a bit older than I look."

"What did you do?"

"Oh, what _didn't _we do?" Tigre said, sounding almost wistful. As Austin's expression changed from suspicion to disgust, he added, "Oh, don't get the wrong idea. Most of the time, we didn't do anything that any doctor wouldn't do; the only difference was, our services were for very unpopular people in places that weren't supposed to exist."

"And the bit about `do no harm'...?"

Tigre shrugged. "Doctors get used to thinking situationally, even when they aren't in a war zone. Like, what if the only way to save a patient is an operation that could kill him anyway? Or, what if you think an experimental drug will cure a subject's cancer, but you have to assign one more to the control group? Or, what if the only vaccine against a disease that kills millions will kill dozens who might have stayed healthy? Compared to situations like that, killing someone who tries to kill you and your patient first is nothing."

"What was your mission?" Austin asked.

"Well... First understand, once the CDC learned of the virus- whenever that was- it decided almost immediately against trying to develop a vaccine," said Tigre. "It wasn't just that the odds were overwhelmingly against us: Even if we had a vaccine, and even if testing and approval went out the window, the medical sector didn't have the facilities to make anywhere near enough. With the information we provided, the military reached the same decision even sooner. It was the * politicians who wouldn't listen, or at least not enough of them. The way I heard it from someone who would know, the last straw was when two or three senators on a subcommittee got together and threatened that if a top-notch research program for a vaccine wasn't created, they would block funding for anything else. A lot of the people who knew about it figured they wanted the vaccine for themselves. My guess is, they were more concerned about being the ones who told the voters and campaign donors that nobody was even trying to make a vaccine. Like the next election would matter if we actually needed one.

"I went into Tulsa, week one, as leader of a recon team. We had been prepping for something like it over a period of four months. We went in mixed together with other relief staff, saving hospitals and camps dozens of times over, and without anyone noticing if we could help it. But that only kept people coming, people who were already past helping, and people who would have been better off running the other way, and the zeds followed them. Meanwhile, sometimes we would isolate a subject for study, which meant immobilizing him or her or it for transfer to a different location. Twelve were lepers. We were ready to stay to the end, but then we got orders for a helevac to Texas. Same *, only this time our orders were to test a vaccine. Nobody told us where it came from, but we never heard anything more about the lepers we sent back. We made a pact, to test the vaccine on ourselves. Two were fine, one went prodromal, and I ended up like this. I received a new order, to go to Columbus, Ohio with my unit's extraction team. The other two people on my team had orders to accompany me during transfer, which was basically code for, hand me over by force if necessary. I waited until we got face to face with extraction, and then I made a break for it."

"What happened to the other men?" Austin asked.

Tigre answered, promptly and emotionlessly: "I killed them all."

Austin was silent, and broke the silence only to ask, "If they were capturing lepers to create a vaccine before, why are they still doing it now?"

Tigre shrugged. "That's politicians for you; they don't have to make sense. Anyway, I think there's a more important question to ask: What are they making sure so many people get to Vegas?" He grinned. "Don't tell me you haven't thought about it."

"More people in one place are easier to protect," he said.

"Then where's the protection?"

Austin sighed. "Or... If enough people stay in one place, they can draw zombies away from somewhere else."

"Bingo," Tigre said. "And you know this isn't the only place they're trying it, or the first."

"When I got out of Abilene, I saw a fireball behind me," Austin said. Tigre nodded. "And... the first Sibyl gave me a map that showed Columbus, Ohio was safe. But then Krista told me it burned to the ground."

Tigre grinned mirthlessly. "Right again."

Austin shook his head. "Never mind that. Can we rescue Jack Ketch?"

"As it happens, he left a trail," Tigre said. "Blood, his. Take a walk around with the others, and they will find it easy enough."

"What if more of the `Angels' are waiting for us?"

Tigre grinned again, this time with clear enthusiasm. "I'm counting on it."


	21. Mall People

**And back to the mall... Plan to do a "Death valley Drag" post shortly, and a major scene for the "leper's crusade" arc of this story.**

**Incidentally, my Amazon "store" has a new entry, _Night of the Yahoo_, a "best-of" collection with what seems to be one of my most popular Zombieland pieces, "Jacob and Two Women".**

Krista was frowning as the hour approached 9 in the morning, but she smiled at a familiar face: "Chacha! Oh, and Bell!" She embraced her friend, with the little girl's arms around her knees.  
"Ah, fer cryin' out loud," Sydney muttered, "one more woman shows up, and suddenly it's a lovefest. No offense." He glanced at the twins.  
"So, what brings you here?" Krista asked.  
"Just making a few deliveries," Chacha said. "To be honest, I was kinda hoping there would be some work for me..." She glanced expectantly.  
Krista explained what they had seen inside. "They got both entrances open, but Sahara is insisting on waiting to send anyone else in until we know more," she concluded. "Of course, he's dragging his feet on that, too." Chacha looked at her thoughtfully. "You have a plan," she said.  
Krista nodded almost grudgingly. "Just an idea," she said. She looked at Chacha, then Bell. "Actually... you might be able to help..."

"Just walk like you've got a right to be here," Sydney said through a forced smile. "And do it a little faster, why doncha..." They got through the north entrance just before someone shouted.  
Sydney had led the way in, but fell almost immediately to the rear once they were inside. Krista came to the front, holding hands with Bell. Chacha walked beside her. Sydney followed, in between the twins. None of them bore a firearm. It was a calculated effort to appear unthreatening, and even rouse sentimentality among the embattled survivors Krista was sure were hiding somewhere within.  
They were pointedly casual, stopping to look at what was in the shops, and even tying on clothes. Krista and Chacha laughed when Bell tried on a pair of stiletto heels, and guffawed when she actually managed to walk in them. Sydney soon began to smile, and even the twins eased up.  
They did a full circuit of the main corridor and got halfway through another before they heard a male voice call out, "Please go." Sydney whirled, pulling out his hammer. They stood between the store front of Sur La Table home d cor store and the entrance to the parking garage. The speaker was nowhere in sight. The voice spoke again, seemingly from a different direction: "We don't need help. We haven't hurt anyone. We just want to be left alone."

"Who's `we'?" Sydney said. At a gesture from Krista, he grudgingly lowered his hammer.

"How long have you been here?" she said.  
The whole time. Krista looked to Sydney, and he gave a forced smile as he spoke: "You did a good job here. Structure cleared, secured and cleaned up; still fully intact and habitable; even kept the merchandise undamaged... Great job, really. Better than my whole colony did in five months at Fashion Show. I bet you could give us pointers." Krista stepped toward the Wyland gallery, next door to Sur La Table, still holding Bell's hand.

"Go. Please," the voice said, cracking like a boy in puberty.  
"You were a college student, weren't you?" she said. "Did you get here from the college? You did, didn't you? Amazing. It would have been easier to get to Terrible's, but you fought your way here. This place must have meant a lot to you, for you to do something like that. Maybe you were an art student? No- I'm guessing science major. Or maybe you were still deciding. There's no way you could have bought anything in here, but you came anyway, just to look at the art, and feel like you weren't hiding."

" You don't know anything about me." The voice seemed to come from behind her.  
"I can see you're a good ventriloquist," she said, "and I bet you're a good man."

" No, just good at staying alive. That's all I was good for."

" Really? You didn't do anything for the other people here? I can't believe that. If that was the kind of person you were, you wouldn't be talking to us."

Abruptly, the crowd barrier raised, and a young man stepped into view. "What do you want?" he said.

"I know this guy," Sydney said. "Not personally, I mean, but I've seen his stuff. He does- well, did- paintings on the walls of buildings. I'm talking whole walls, of big buildings. I saw one in Bundaberg that was seven stories high, damnedest thing... I guess he just doesn't get the same look when it isn't 30 meters high." Krista looked at the young man. He wasn't at all like her husband: stocky and pudgy where Austin was tall and skinny, hair long instead of short, a demeanor that was more weary than wary. But, they had in common dark, curly hair, and she couldn't help comparing him to her husband when she met him. As it turned out, he was not alone: A girl, clearly younger, possibly not even sixteen, had come out. Sydney looked like he was ready to make assumptions, but Krista was sure that nothing was going on. The girl introduced herself as MJ, and the young man had grudgingly given the name of Jay.  
"... Jay totally saved my life on Day 0," MJ said. "I got trapped in a gas station. Lots of people were running by, but he was the one who stopped to help. All he had was a guitar, and there were five of them. He kept hitting them, but they kept getting back up. and the guitar kept getting more and more busted up... By the time he was down to the last two, all there was left of the guitar was the handle. Then he hit one so hard that broke in half, and the other grabbed him, so he just turns around and stabs it in the neck."

" Wow," Krista said with a smile, "sounds like you're a real hero."

Jay shook his head. "There were seven people in there. MJ was the only one who made it." MJ didn't protest, which Krista sensed was a matter of resignation after trying many times to convince him otherwise.  
"So... how many of you are here?" Sydney said.  
"Fifteen, all told," Jay said. "We mostly stick around this end."

There was a rapping at the storefront. Jay practically winced. Outside was a woman in her sixties, accompanied by a middle-aged man and a teenage boy who were clearly not very happy at accompanying her. "My word! How is it we have the first guests in months, and Jay here is the only one willing to say hello!" the woman said in a raucous singsong. Her voice got even more jarring as she bent to address Bell: "My, aren't you the sweetest thing! Oh, and I see you have a baby brother or sister coming!" Krista returned the woman's gaze like a deer in the headlights.  
"That's not her mother, Mrs. F, she is," Jay said, pointing to Chacha. The two women had not actually got around to volunteering that information.  
"Now, you know I hate it when you call me that," the old woman said. "And one of these days, you owe me your real name. I'm Dana Fletcher, and this is my grandson Gabriel and his father Sandy. Now say hello, Gabriel."

Her grandson shook Krista's hand, while his father, obviously not the woman's own son, looked happy to be at the periphery of her attention. Krista was surprised the boy mumbled words were not, "Hello, Gabriel." Mrs. F was already tottering away. "Now I must find the others. Especially John and Maggie. It will be wonderful for Maggie finally to have a playmate her own age..." Sandy trudged after her, but Gabriel followed with visible reluctance, giving a long glance at MJ.  
"I call her Mrs. F, but I think of her as Mrs. Fidget, for a C.S. Lewis character," Jay said. Krista didn't recognize the reference, but the name certainly fit. "I suppose she'll flush out the others. They're okay." He rose and began to pace. Krista looked to Sydney, who returned a grimace.  
"Either these people are perfectly normal," he said, "or they're more * up than most."


	22. Trails

**Another chapter that's pretty much "build-up", but I think with more tension and a little action...**

Even to a leper's keen eyes, it was virtually impossible to see in the dark space. But, as Jack Ketch hobbled to his feet, he quickly discerned enough. First and foremost, he wasn't at the casino prison. The scent of many other lepers was here, but it was mostly old trails. From the subtleties of air circulation and especially the scent of gasoline, he recognized that this was a garage or loading dock, not a building's interior. And then, sniffing for finer nuances of odor, he recognized a presence. "Sibyl?"

"I wondered how long it would take you to get here," Sibyl said.

"Well, in case you didn't notice, I didn't exactly make my own way," he said ruefully.

"It was enough," Sibyl said.

"They're recording us, you know."

"Of course. I expect that's why they put you in here."

Ketch grinned wide. "So, what do we talk about?"

"How many are left."

"Tuerto died when they took you. Lagertijo, right after." He said nothing of Tigre.

"As you can see, it's somewhat dull here," Sibyl said. "Incidentally, at least one door is unlocked. I understand one should _not_ try to leave, however."

Ketch fingered an unfamiliar object around his neck. "I wondered what this was for... One of those invisible leashes for dogs, I suppose?"

"The same general idea. Brother Friday- he was in here when I arrived- warned me of it. Then he was taken out. I didn't care to test it myself."

"I expect it's true."

"No matter. The Samaritan will find us."

"I'm pretty sure that's _their_ idea."

Somehow, Ketch could hear Sibyl's smile. "Of course."

A figure with a pale face and dark curly hair looked about furtively before skulking from one building to another. It appeared briefly as a shape darting past an open door of a room with a window. Others followed, but it was the one with curly hair who remained in the center of the distant observer's crosshairs.

For many years, Austin had been haunted by a Voice: a cruel and shrewd speaker inside his head that pestered and belittled him endlessly. He had never believed the Voice came from anywhere but his own head. But he had also, once in a while, felt a Presence. The Presence had no voice or words, but "spoke" in what he felt, what he saw, and what he somehow knew even before he saw it. The Presence did not berate him, but cautioned, consoled and guided him, and he had never been able to convince himself that it was not something- or someone- real and outside himself.

The Presence seemed strong now, and this time it was heightening his anxiety. He was continually halting, checking for danger again and yet again. The buildings in Enterprise were too spread out to give much cover, which was good reason to breath easier when facing the threat of lurking zombies and snipers. But he knew all too well that anyone looking for them would always be able to see further away than they could be seen. "Do _something_ already," Luna hissed. Austin nodded, genuinely assured. It was enough for the Presence to satisfy him. As he leaned out of the building, still cautious but newly confident, the distant crosshairs flared at the pull of a trigger.

The _angel_ that exited at the rear of the small office building acted almost distracted. He dropped promptly into a crouch, surveying his surroundings, but also touching his hand to an earpiece. He nodded, and mouthed into a mouthpiece. He rose, slowly, and as he did, there was a volley of whipcrack pops, in two bursts, from the ground floor of the building, followed by pinging impacts as metallic pellets hit a car halfway across the parking lot. Then the shooter vaulted through a broken window, and a third _angel_ rose from the overgrown bushes beside the building. Both started to move in, until an arrow sailed from under the car and hit their captain in the calf. One immediately ran for the wounded man, and the other reluctantly laid down more fire in the direction of the car. His last shots were a burst fired in vain at a pale figure vaulting over the wall of the parking lot.

"You know," Ketch said, "the Samaritan has started to wonder if we really can read minds."

Sibyl giggled, not quite unkindly. "As if _we _would ever _need_ to."

"He's a good leader, and a good man. Better than he knows."

"Perhaps he is better for that." Ketch smiled. "Do you think he will rescue us?"

"No." Ketch's voice was mournful, but his smile grew wider as he pulled a sharpened flint from the empty sheath of his knife.

The three _angeles_, two supporting a wounded third, loped their way to a distinctly nondescript van. The captain went into the back, assisted by two inside, while three more _angeles_ piled out. One of the new trio fired his gun at a ragged pack of zombies, unusually numerous and active for the place and time of day, that skulked toward the van. The wounded captain put a stop to it with a curt order, and his two men gave the other three glares. The van pulled away, heading north in low gear. The three who had been dropped off went east, while the pair who had stayed behind went west, after the traitor who had wounded their captain.

Meanwhile, Austin ran almost eagerly through the vacant lots of Enterprise, unaware that the captain of the _angeles_ recon team had put a satellite lock on him.


	23. Rematch

**I suppose I slowed myself down debating how to set up this scene (and did decide to make a change to the _angeles_' weaponry along the way, actually to one of my _first_ ideas), but in the end I just reminded myself of the kind of action that has kept the Saga interesting: Sudden, brutal and _almost_ anticlimactic. Enjoy.**

"Why," Austin said, "do we keep ending up in malls?"

The trail had been long, but as noon approached, they had finally found their way to the Las Vegas Outlet Center, a discount mall down the Boulevard from Luxor. "Look- another circle," Qijano said. Sure enough, the wrecked and abandoned cars in the parking lot of the free-standing annex building were oddly arranged to leave a thirty-foot circle clear.

Luna looked more closely at the signs. "An outlet mall with a Guess," Luna said, "and still it look sleazy."

"We're here," Conejo said, "now what?"

"We circle," Austin said, " and look for the best way in."

"There's not gonna be nobody," Luna said. "Not unless they are waiting for us."

"They won't be setting another trap," Austin said, surprised to find he believed it. "If they wanted that, they would have surrounded us the last time."

The pair of _angeles_ had closed in on an athletic complex several blocks from the outlet mall. A dozen zombies came wandering toward them, looking disgruntled but not hostile. The _angeles _walked confidently through their midst. A grisly male in a filthy sports jersey stepped in their path and growled. One _angel_ stepped forward and felled it with a single blow, while the other went around. The other zombies were already turning away, toward a small swarm coming down the street.

An angel glanced briefly and casually at a broken padlock on the greenskeepers' building. The other gave the slightest hint of a nod, and turned the other direction, while his partner meandered under a set of bleachers. Both quickly passed out of sight. A minute or so later, there was a whistle of a crossbow, a thump, followed almost immediately by a crash and a brief series of blows. Then there was another crash, louder and with a visible cause, as an _angel_ went hurtling through the padlocked door. He tumbled and rolled, then bounded to his feet, running creditably despite a visible leg wound. Tigre reached the doorway just in time to give a parting glare. "B team," he muttered.

Conejo covered the distance to mall's main entrance in a furious sprint, finally leaping through a broken window. Anyone who saw him would not be goaded into revealing themselves. But, on the south end of the mall, a stealthy figure ducked into a side entrance.

"This plan is so _estupido _even Quixote won't say anything for it," Luna griped as she and Austin moved among wrecked and abandoned cars toward the other front entrance.

"We looked at our options," Austin said as he forced the door. "This was the best of them."

"And that's saying what?"

The _angel_ that sidled out of the Guess store by the entrance was calm and collected, dividing attention between the corridor ahead and the obviously sophisticated instrument in his hands. A screen, covered with white cloth to reduce the light, showed dots and pulsing waves representing sound and motion in the corridor. He stopped in his tracks as the screen lit up. From down the corridor came the taunting strains of the mall's carousel. He was still staring at the screen in confusion and concern as a huge, silent shadow emerged from the shoe store behind him.

At the rear of the main mall, a distinctively inconspicuous van departed in haste. In front of the annex, two more _angeles_ hurried forth. One paused to fire a .22 submachine gun almost lackadaisically at a car where Juan lay in ambush. The leper's fabled preternatural abilities were just enough for him to avoid getting more than slightly shot. The other readied a police-issue grenade launcher, pausing to make a hand gesture to a nondescript lump on the roof. In seemingly the same motion, he brought the launcher to bear on his comrade's position. But he was not as fast as the arrow that sailed down from the roof to lodge in his throat.

The angel had the unmistakable bearing of someone just young and inexperienced enough to think he has something to prove. He sprayed a score and more of his gun's nattering bullets after Conejo as the boy circled the moving carousel. The boy shouted a taunting curse and bounded onto the carousel. Austin took aim with a .30-.06, until Luna made a flying tackle just ahead of the _angel_'s wild fire. With an inarticulate shot, Qijano ran to block the gate to the carousel. In sheer pique, the _angel_ shot him and vaulted over, right onto the carousel platform. One tall dark killer and one lanky boy stalked each other through the bobbing, circling horses, vanishing from site, reappearing and vanishing again as the ride circled.

As the carousel made another round, Luna screeched at the sight of the _angel _closing almost to point blank range. Still sprawled halfway on top of Austin, she drew his carbine, and then he was the one who grabbed to stop her from firing. With an amazing upward leap, Conejo disappeared into the machinery above and came down on the _angel_'s head. With no less skill, the _angel_ knocked the boy to the floor. Instead of firing at once, he knelt to pin the boy, and went to work getting the muzzle of his gun into his open mouth. Then, looking up, he glimpsed a new arrival, huge and silent, who cast down a second angel carried on his shoulder as he not so much jumped as merely stepped over the railing around the carousel. Austin ran to the carousel controls, heedless of an especially wild volley of fire. He pulled the level for the brake, as the music was joined by crashing and screams. Then, just as the deceleration of the carousel imparted maximum centrifugal force, Boca hurled the _angel _from the edge of the platform like a discus.

"Just 'cos an angel got wings," Luna called out at the height of the _angel_'s trajectory, "don' no mean he can fly." Even as she spoke, a support column terminally illustrated the point.

Austin knelt to put his knee on their only prisoner's chest. "Yeah, yeah, we *ed up," the _angel_ said as his helmet and mask came off. "But hey, we don't get to pick him."

"Why?" Austin said. "For them? For her?" He was started by a cry from Conejo. Looking up, he saw the Sibyl, walking unsteadily out of an anchor store. His gaze jerked back to the prisoner at the sound of a crunch.

"Nah," the _angel_ slurred, his grin revealing a burst capsule in his teeth, "_this_... was for _him_."

"They took Jack," the Sibyl called out as she approached. "Two of them took him, but just one stayed to handle me." She held up the sharpened flint, now bloody, and cast it away. "Bit sloppy, that. I think they were in a hurry. I think it's best if we go. _Fast."_

Austin, Luna, and Conejo started to shout out questions, but all fell silent when Boca cleared his throat and pointed up. The sound was startlingly faint, but once they were listening for it, there was no mistaking the sound of helicopter blades. Then Juan burst in, shouting, and a block or two away, the wounded angel started limping faster, the other way.

And then the mall annex exploded.


	24. Tigre By The Tail

**...And the conclusion (after a segue back to Krista) ! Incidentally, I also edited the "Mall People" chapter in the last few days, fixing a major screwup in punctuation and updating a shameless plug. This chapter reprises one of the first lines I came up with for Tigre, though I waited a while even to put it in the first time. And, I think I'll dedicate it to the memory of the crew of the Cyrano in _Walking Dead_... poor nameless bastards.**

The gathered group represented something like four-fifths of the little colony in the Miracle Mile mall. The woman Krista could not help thinking of as Mrs. Fidget dominated conversation like Godzilla stomping Tokyo. While her presumable son-in-law Sandy had excused himself, Gabriel had ventured back out, and was trying without notable success to hit on MJ. Krista was almost certain MJ wanted Jay, but he was far more interested in a young woman named Pearl. Pearl was deaf, or nearly so, and Jay could only talk to her with steady eye contact that was clearly difficult yet rewarding for him, assisted by occasional translation in signing from Pearl's mother Grace. Krista decided it was a safer bet than trying to make oneself heard over Mrs. Fidget. A married couple introduced as Dagwood and Lucy arrived, along with two children, a twelve-year-old girl going by the doubtful name of Starla and a nine-year-old boy who was addressed as Calvin. Then there were the only two people Mrs. Fidget freely accorded a place in conversation, though they were the quietest and most retiring of all: John and his little- really, _not_ so little- girl Maggie.

Krista was sure Maggie was not less than seven, but the clothes she wore looked more fitting for a toddler- and years out of style to boot. She was so shy she would scarcely look anyone else in the eye, unless she was by her father's side. Her father was pathetic in his own right, thin, almost gracile, with glasses and a scalp in the early stages of premature baldness. When he got talking, in an almost falsetto voice that reminded her of the midget Big Willy, he almost invariably found his way to the subject of how deplorable the media had been. "There was so much- filth," he said. "The movies, TV shows, magazines... Even the stuff that was supposed to be for kids, you could hardly look without seeing..."

"Sex?" Krista said, bemused.

John frowned deeply and put an arm around Maggie, as if trying to pull her back from the subject. "Not decent," he said. "Children shouldn't have to know at that age." Krista continued to smile at his expense, but Chacha seemed to glare hatefully at him.

"Oh, don't mind him," Mrs. F said. "I've never seen someone take such good care of his little girl. Hardly even lets her out of his sight. Who can blame him...?

As she spoke, there was a sound like distant thunder. Then another, and another... Krista stiffened and stood up. Sydney, who had been roving the mall, burst in. "Somebody's leveling Enterprise!"

Austin and the lepers ran for the nearest exit, in the food court behind the carousel. A flash, a blast of heat and a strangely muffled **_"BOOM"_** heralded the destruction of the Guess substructure. Conejo reached the door first, only to find it locked. Boca snatched up a chair and rammed it through the glass. Austin waved Juan and the Sibyl through next. Another blast breached the main corridor on their left. A staggering wind rushed in through the door. Austin's ears rang, and his nose started to bleed. By locking arms with Luna, he stayed on his feet, but could not make headway against the wind. Then Boca reached back in and pulled them both out. As the remnant of their band ran for the Boulevard, a third blast imploded the roof over the carousel.

With a sound vaguely like a revving motorcycle, the still-unseen helicopter changed course. Austin looked over his shoulder in dread, only to see a smallish, thoroughly generic helicopter turning away from them. A man leaned out a half-open door and fired a rocket launcher through the roof of the north end. Austin fired, but only but a small hole in a window. Juan took aim at the tail, which with a ducted fan enclosing the tail was the only obviously unusual part of the helicopter, and got a flash of metal on metal off the tail fin, but with no result except another "revving" sound. "That tail is what makes it so quiet- the main thing, anyway," he said to no one in particular. "It takes fine-tuning in the harmonics to get minimum noise. They must not be maintaining it quite right, so once in a while the muffling starts to wear thin."

"And that helps us how?" Luna snarked. The helicopter was already disappearing to the other side of the mall, its rotor remaining in view longer than the rest. The launcher fired again, then instead of another thunderous fireball, there was an ordinary blast and pattering shrapnel from an anti-personnel shell. Then there was a screech of a small-caliber, very quick-firing gatling gun.

"It is as I said," Sibyl cut in. "They have never been after us; they only sought the right bait to draw Tigre."

"We have to help him," Austin said.

"Dude... He's more danger than all us put together. Maybe more than all _them_, too," Luna said. "We can no do nothing for him, neither way. Besides, he was no exactly bein' good to us."

"That doesn't matter," Austin said. "He's one of us. He's here because of us. We can't just leave him."

"Samaritan," Sibyl said, "he is not here for us. He is here for you." Austin stared, yet the feeling in his heart was not surprise. "He is your _padrino_, and your _alma gemia_."

"How?" he said. "How is that possible?"

"You know the darkness that is in him," Sibyl said. "My mother knew it better still- and she saw the same darkness in you. She saw that only he could be your padrino."

"But- Jack Ketch was the one who saved me- me and my wife- in the hospital," Austin said.

"He broke the law, and paid a price," Sibyl said.

"So, what are you saying?" Austin snapped. "That I should leave him to die?"

The Sibyl smiled, very unpleasantly. "I am saying... that what happens to Tigre now is not our affair. If you go to him, you go alone."

He gave a long, hard stare, then turned to go. He shouted indignantly when Boca grabbed him by the shoulders. Before he could do any more than that, he was lifted up and deposited on the roof of the mall. Boca defiantly returned Sibyl's stare. "An acceptable liberty," she said grudgingly, "but assuredly pushing the limits."

Even from the roof of the mall, the helicopter was hard to see in its entirety. There was little doubt in Austin's mind that it was, indeed, flying no higher than the rooftop. It circled what was left of the annex, of which the rear was still approximately intact and upright. As he looked, a gatling gun in its nose opened fire, blowing a small car literally to pieces. From the other side of a convenience store, an arrow with a sparkling lit fuse sailed, missing the helicopter but striking a nearby truck. An explosion gutted the vehicle and visibly rocked the aircraft. The pilot nosed up and into a hard turn, and a rocket fired from its far side leveled the store with another fireball.

Austin knew enough about helicopters to be struck by how large the rotor was, and how slowly it was moving, enough for the blades- about six- to look almost solid. That, he was sure, was the other reason the helicopter was so quiet: Larger and more numerous blades generated lift with slower rotations and less engine power. He aimed at the center, fired without apparent damage, and worked the bolt of the rifle almost as painstakingly as he had had to aim it. A second shot seemed to ricochet off a blade, and the helicopter shifted back toward the mall. He almost injured himself in his haste to reload, only to hear the click of an empty chamber. He ran then, throwing a catch to let the empty magazine drop, then falling prostrate in a depression where the roof. His hands trembled, and his fingers seemed almost paralyzed as he fumbled through the process of reloading. Even so, he did better than expected, raising the loaded gun just in time to look straight down the barrels of a gatling gun. Raising the scope wildly, he got a single, searing look at the pilot, with his finger poised on what had to be the trigger, the open left door- and directly behind the pilot, the _right _door opening. He knew their gambit in a moment: Even their direct attack was a feint, to draw Tigre into the line of launcher's line of fire when it seemed it would be pointed the other way.

Then, suddenly, there was light inside the helicopter's hold- the lit fuse of an arrow, embedded in the shoulder of the gunner. The helicopter banked and braked, in what he was sure was an attempt to pitch the doomed angel out one of the doors. Instead, he staggered forward, to fall headlong into the cockpit. The helicopter swooped literally over Austin's head, nosing up until it stalled and then crashing through the far end of the roof. He was already scrabbling out of the depression, and as the roof buckled and shook with the impact, he dived for what cover could be had behind the air conditioning unit, right about the time the explosions started. Then all was a nightmare of smoke, flame, terrible sound, and shock after gut-wrenching shock from the heaving roof.

He came aware again ten feet from the AC unit. A thick cloud of dust and debris hid anything beyond it... if any of it was still standing. He sat up, and then somehow, though his ears were still ringing, it seemed he heard a sound, and it registered that he _might_ have seen the angel pilot trying to open the cockpit door just before the aircraft drop. He almost called out, but went silent when he saw unmistakable movement. He reached for the rifle, keeping his eyes on low, dark from of the _angel_ in the haze, crawling, surely wounded, perhaps dying. The crawling _angel_ halted and began to shift and squirm- checking for wounds? Trying to get up? Reaching for a weapon?

Unbidden and almost simultaneously, two things rose in his mind. There was the vivid image, blocking out the shape and the haze, of Krista, bare, shameless, and gravid, holding her belly as the life inside her stirred. And there was the sound, as if he were hearing it again, of Tigre saying, _"There's three kinds of killing. There's killing someone you're sure is trying to kill you. There's killing someone you're sure is not trying to kill you. Then there's killing someone when you know they might try to kill you, or might not. It's the last one, I think, that's hardest to do, and it's even harder to live with."_ And then there was the flash, roar and wrenching kick of the gun, disconnected from any awareness of having pulled the trigger, and he saw the _angel _fall, right through the roof.

Blocks away, the wounded _angel_ of the recon team stopped, listening for any more gunfire or explosions, or any softer sounds nearer at hand. After only a moment, he turned aside. By the time he had gone a hundred meters, a swarm was pouring down the street. He paused again, this time seeming almost eager. He moved to one side, and took aim at the figure that came skulking behind him...

But Andy Capp shot first.


	25. The Meat Mechanic

**More with the **_**angeles**_**! And in case anyone has been keeping close track, I changed the dynamics of the last chapters' battle a bit.**

Austin lost sensibility for some time, and smoke and dust further insulated him from a sense of his surroundings. It was the Sibyl's voice that drew him back: "Samaritan! Samaritan!"

He raised his head. The sound seemed to come from below. Then Conejo shouted practically by his ear, painfully loud. He rose to his feet, the fractured roof rocking beneath him. Peering out with a clearer view, he beheld an abrupt drop perhaps eight feet away. About two-thirds of the mall had collapsed. Conejo led him to Juan, who stood on Boca's shoulders at the roof's edge. "What happened to `not your business'?" he said as his feet touched the ground.

Sibyl smiled as she emerged from a hole in the wall. "The rules may be loosened for one in distress, even if it is distress of his own making." Her face hardened. "We found seven _angeles_ dead."

"Tigre said there were four people on the team making the grabs," Austin said. "Plus six on an extraction team, to get them out, I guess. My guess is, the first team was wiped out, along with half the second team. And he said there were two more teams: Six men in a command squad, pretty much reserves, and three men left of a four-man recon team. I suppose one of the ones we took out here was a reserve, sent to replace the one Ketch shot, and I'm guessing the recon team took the first crack at Tigre. That leaves only eight _angeles, _including their rookies. We... we're winning."

"If this is winning, I no don' wanna know what being a loser is like," Luna said.

"What is done is done," Sibyl said. "We have already suffered too much in our quest not to finish it. Find the trail, and follow. It will lead to the heart of whatever evil we face." As the other lepers fanned out for a renewed search, she turned to Austin. "I saw one of the _angeles_ in there. He fell, not from the helicopter. Is there anything you must know?"

Austin thought of Tigre's words again: _It's the last one, I think, that's hardest to do, and it's even harder to live with._ His lips trembled as he said, "N-no."

Sudden, blinding light stabbed Jack Ketch's eyes. Hands gripped his shoulders and hauled him to his feet. His hands were bound, and his ankles, leaving him able only to shuffle along as the _angeles_ herded him out of the van, from darkness into full sunlight. Turning his head, he saw someone following. With a sudden elbow jab, he pulled free, just to turn around and face the third _angel_. The hazy figure raised a hand, clearly a gesture for restraint by the other two. To Ketch's sight, the arm was a blur, like a propeller in motion. "I may not have seen your face," Ketch said, "and I may never have heard your voice... but I know we've met."

"Is there something you wish?" a voice said, masculine, smooth and slightly raspy.

"Let me go," Ketch said. "Let everyone go."

"I'm afraid I'm not authorized to do that," the _angel_ recon captain said.

Ketch showed his incredulity with a few especially foul words, and added, "Why bother with excuses? You may not be on top, but you call the shots that count, and your whole mission is one big blank check."

"Very well, I admit I have discretion... but you were the one who said..."

"Nobody lets Jack Ketch walk away without regretting it. Right."

"So, it wouldn't be `discrete' of me to let you go, would it?"

"If I might ask... who the hell were you?"

"If I tell you, will you turn and start walking?" Ketch nodded, and started to march. Despite the blinding light and haze of motion trails, he could make out structures all around him, if usually at some distance. After a moment's scrutiny, he recognized a strange, huge tubular shape as an airliner. He smiled, while the captain talked:

"They called me the Meat Mechanic," the _angel _said, almost wistfully. "I was a med student, and I wanted to be a surgeon. I wanted to master the essence of surgery: Not factoids, or theory, or research, but absolute perfection of technique. Most others... failed to appreciate the virtues of my approach. Particularly admissions departments and scholarship boards."

"Maybe," Ketch said, "you weren't as good as you thought."

"Probably not," the _angel _said. "Please, don't look surprised. I told you, I pursue perfection, and for that, it is imperative that I am open and objective about my own failings. I admit, I wasn't always so objective as I am now. In any event, I couldn't get far in medical school with no scholarship, and I couldn't get into the Army Medical Corps without more med school credits. So I enlisted, not as a medic, but as a frontline _soldier_. There, I pursued perfection the same way I always had as a doctor, only then, my efforts were finally appreciated- enough to get a full ride, anywhere I wanted. I finished med school, a year ahead of time, and then I tried to reenlist as an Army medic. But then someone discretely approached me about a new program."

"So... you were the first of the _angeles_?" Ketch said, not really as a question.

"One might say that," the captain said.

"Then," Jack Ketch added in eagerly, "why aren't you in charge?"

"Oh, I _could _have been," the captain said, the sound of a smile in his voice. "If I had accepted a few more promotions, curried a few more favors... But, as I have said, I value objectivity, particularly about myself. I know I am not the best choice for a commander, and that overall command is not the best use of my talents. So, I chose to remain where I can do the most good, and those who did rise to the top were understanding enough to allow me to stay there."

Ketch moved in for the kill. "So... What did you like best? The surgery, or the shooting?"

"I suppose you think I must be a sadistic monster," the Mechanic said, sounding almost bemused. "That only a doctor who enjoyed doing harm could go down my path. You see two things as a dichotomy, where I see a continuum. Have you considered, that a soldier and a doctor have something very fundamental in common? They can decide who lives, and who dies. No one can go far as either, without the strongest wish for that power. You might expect each man to go the path of his secret preference, and perhaps most do. But I can be open and discerning about my own mind, and I have found it is enough for me merely to have the choice. So, I believe I am impartial."

"Right," Ketch said. "Nothing wrong with killing people, as long as you don't play favorites." The _angel _made what might have been a chuckle.

They drew near a door at the foot of a large, terraced structure, recognizable as the Luxor "annex". "We will bring you food shortly," the Mechanic said.

Ketch managed to wipe a spot of gore from his chin. "No thanks. I already ate." Then he whipped his head to one side, and an _angel_ fell with a distinctively feminine cry. The other fell into a martial-arts defensive stance, uncertain exactly what to do against an opponent without free arms. The Mechanic lunged in, thrusting a needle into the back of Ketch's neck, but not before he bit the other _angel_ on the back of the hand. Then the female _angel_ fired a tranquilizer gun.

Two more _angeles_ and a pair of shuffling, servile "Type 2" zombies emerged. The Mechanic pointed to Ketch's unconscious form. "Lock him up, in isolation from the general population, and observe closely what happens to him," he said. The Type 2s carried Ketch away, guided by one angel. The bitten _angel_ looked with unmistakeable relief at the needle still in the Mechanic's hand, but cringed in doubt and then dread at the cold gaze that was returned. He abruptly grabbed a sidearm, but his female comrade casually knocked it from his hands and twisted his arm behind his back. As the third angel stepped in with a pair of handcuffs, the Mechanic said, "I am afraid you are going to be the _control _group..."


	26. Breaking of the Fellowship

**Breaking of the Fellowship**

** I've been working ahead with my handwritten "vignettes" for this story, and decided to try to cram a lot of it into this one chapter. More segue, mostly, with intrigue, jokes and a little borderline smut!**

The remnant of the party look dazed as they made their final approach to Luxor, skirting the ruins of THEhotel. "What do we do now?" Austin asked.

"There is no more `we'," Sibyl said. He literally gaped, with a look that went rapidly from uncomprehending to disbelieving to heartbroken.

"Go, Samaritan," Luna said.

"What? But- You asked for my help! You asked my help in freeing the lepers in there! I risked everything for you! And now you're just sending me away, before we've even tried to break them out?"

"Do you think you are being judged a failure, Samaritan?" Sibyl said. "Do you think we would judge you?"

"You- you-" He looked imploringly at Sibyl, but found her gaze inscrutable, except a certain look he had seen before... "You told Krista- you promised her- I would return alive. You think- if I stay with you- I'm going to die. You- Do you think you are all going to die?"

Luna gave him a backhanded slap across the back of the head. "That's not no problem to you, Samaritan!" she said curtly. "Go! Go back for _La Peliroja_! Keep her safe!"

"No." He looked down in humiliation, but raised his head in defiance. "I came to do this, and I refuse to go before it is done."

"Then it will never be done," Sibyl said, "because we will do nothing more as long as you are with us."

He took and let out a deep breath. "All right... I'll go," he said, backing away.

"Deceit does not become you, Samaritan," Sibyl said. He felt a sharp sting in his neck. "You aren't very good at it, either." As he slumped to his knees, she said, "And another thing... Once you are together again with _La Peliroja_... Get out of Vegas."

"Hour three since exposure," the Mechanic calmly spoke into the recorder. "Symptomology is highly unusual. Physical symptoms indicate subject is well into prodromus, yet said subject remains surprisingly lucid... Doctor, please tell me, how do you feel?" The only reply was a string of curses. "Despite a high level of agitation, the subject is still capable of coherent speech- however resistant he is to constructive conversation... Come now, doctor, let's try to be objective, dispassionate."

"We should kill him. Now." So said a woman beside him.

"Nurse... which of us has seniority here?"

"You do," she grated, with an unmistakable note of contempt that left no need to add that "seniority" was not always synonymous with "superior".

"And, were we or were we not ordered very specifically to observe _closely _anything recognized as unusual in an HPNE infection?"

"Yes. We're observing him," said the Nurse (for she answered to it as a name among her peers). "We're observing him going crazy. Can we kill him _now_?"

"Nurse... Someone without so much confidence in your abilities might suspect you are beginning to panic."

"Someone with less confidence in yours might think you just have a big ego."

"If you think one of my decisions should be reconsidered, you are always free to speak to the Colonel." There was a hiss of breath, which made it clear enough she would do no such thing. "Now, as it happens, the Colonel has requested my presence..."

The Nurse stared through the glass, at the colleague who crouched with his face to the far right corner of a holding cell. As she looked, the sound came again. She had heard it before over the company channel, and the Mechanic had heard it with his own ears, on the first mission in which they had lost a man. Yet, he was the one who would not agree to terminate the teammate.

...Who was laughing, laughing like a hyena, like a demon, like something with a terrible, twisted kind of intellect, but no trace of humanity.

Austin awoke, to gaze up at his wife. It took him a moment to realize it was no dream. "Where am I?" he said.

She ran her fingers through his hair, and kissed him. "You're in Planet Hollywood," she said. "One of the perimeter guards saw someone really tall leave you just out of range."

"When?" he said.

"An hour ago."

"What time is it?"

"Four in the afternoon."

"Has- Is anyone watching Luxor?" He was already taking account of their surroundings. He was stretched out on a lounge chair. She knelt beside him. They were alone. She had a short skirt on, and somehow, he could tell there was nothing underneath.

"Everything's fine," she said as she straddled the couch. "You're a hero. You're my hero. Everything's fine, as long as you're with me." He nodded, with a hint of a smile- the sign of surrender. "I knew you wouldn't let me down," she said as she lifted her skirt and lowered herself. She swore like she was saying a prayer, and her boots scuffled and squeaked. He was surprised when she spoke again. "God. I- I think I'd die without you." He murmured something and pulled her down, just to keep her from seeing tears in his eyes.

The eerie cackle rang through the darkness. The man who answered to the title and name of the Colonel stepped back instinctively. The Mechanic, who was nothing if not unsusceptible to imagination, pushed a button and said, "That may be amusing to you, but it is only an annoyance to me."

"My mistake, then," answered the voice of Jack Ketch. "I thought maybe you had my kind of sense of humor. Or _a_ sense of humor."

"There is someone here who would like to speak to you." The Colonel stepped forward, all but shouldering the Mechanic aside.

"Mr.- Ketch," he said, "I am in overall command of this operation. I am genuinely sorry that events have placed us so much at- cross-purposes. It has truly, always been our wish to treat all of your– people humanely. Tell me- is there anything we can do for you?"

"Bite me... C'mon, I bet somebody at least _started_ to smile." The Mechanic looked sidelong at the Colonel, who happened to choose that moment to cover his mouth and cough.

The Mechanic spoke again: "How are you feeling? Any lightheadedness? Mood swings? Headaches?... Heightened light sensitivity, perhaps?"

"Okay, you just go to hell and you die, you SOB."

"I will take that as a yes... Can you tell us, how many other lepers were with you?"

"Ask Tuerto. Come in here, and I'll arrange a meeting."

"I didn't find our intelligence clear... What was your _plan_? Did you _have_ a plan?"

"Sure, we had a _perfect_ plan. Kill you. Free our people. Play cricket. Cricket optional."

"Enough," the Colonel said. "Mr. Ketch, I am prepared to make you an offer: We will release you, and everyone who does not wish to remain among our subjects- and I assure you, there is no shortage of individuals who, being fully briefed or our work and the objectives it serves, have agreed to remain entirely of their own free will."

"Yeah? And what would be in it for you?"

"You- that is, you, your leader, and your friends- would put an end to any action against our base. We would arrange to meet to discuss a more open and amicable way to provide for each other's needs and wants. And it is absolutely non-negotiable that we would be meeting in private with the individual called the White Tiger."

Ketch chuckled. "You really don't get it, do you? What went on, wasn't our plan. It's his. And if you want to end it, you've gotta talk to him."

The Mechanic covered the microphone. "It's imperative that you evacuate the main helipad."

"Already done."

"The Package?"

"Secure."

"Secure? I'll tell you how to make it secure. Give it to me."

"Doctor... With all due respect... your service has been long and excellent, but you do not have clearance for anything like the Package, and there is no way I could justify providing you access to my superiors."

"Fine. Then get it, _in your hands_, and stay with me. _At __**all**__ times_."

"Doctor... If I did that, how could I continue to manage overall operations?"

"Look at it this way, Colonel. There is no threat to this operation greater than _him_, and nothing will be as important to _him_ as getting control of the Package." The Mechanic whirled abruptly, dropping halfway into a defensive judo posture. From inside the cell, the demoniac laugh came, and another laugh could be heard answering it.

"I will make arrangements for the package," the Colonel said, coldly and calmly. "In the meantime, I _order_ you to have Meadows put down."

Krista giggled as Austin gripped her hips again. By then, she was the one stretched out on the lounger, no longer wearing her boots or much else. "Again? What are you trying to do, put me in a coma?"

Austin leaned down and whispered, "You know, that would be _so_ good for my ego." Then he turned her over, not rough but hardly delicate. She moaned happily, burying her face in a cushion as her husband's lips kissed the back of her neck and his hands went to work at the base of her spine.

Sibyl approached a helicopter pad, alone. "I know you are here," she said. She turned her eyes, to look directly into Tigre's eyes.

"Did you send him away?" Tigre asked caustically.

"He would not leave of his own accord, but he is gone. And we warned him."

"That won't be enough."

"No, but _La Peliroja _may be persuasive."

Tigre laughed a single, cynical "ha!". His eyes tracked Sibyl's gaze to the helipad.

"Nothing left there. 'Cept a trap, of course. Not a big one."

"You may find what you are looking for," the Sibyl said sadly, "but you will never have what you want."

"What_ would_ I want?" he said, stepping back. "What I've done, nothing can undo, and where I've gone, nobody comes back from. I've no illusions, and don't go into any pretty speeches. There's no happy ending left for me. The closest I can get, is making sure no other poor, decent bastard gets himself where I am." Sibyl shook her head but said nothing as he turned and stalked away. Just before he disappeared into the shadows, he looked back and said, "If anybody follows me- them, or you, or even _him_- one way or the other, they are going to die."

Krista snuggled under a blanket, drifting in and out of sleep. She smiled at the approach of soft but unmistakably masculine footfalls. "Austin?"

"Ahh... That'd be no." She stifled a shriek and almost rolled onto the floor at Sydney's brogue. "Never mind me!" he called back hurriedly. Already, he was speaking to Detroit: "See if anyone knows where Austin is. And, uh, clean that couch. Or just cremate it."


	27. Things fall apart

Sibyl had just finished informing her companions of Tigre's warning. Luna promptly asked, "So, how do we go in?"

"Maybe we shouldn't," Juan said.

Sibyl shook her head. "There is no choice to be made. Tigre is out brother, and we must take care of our own, whether they wish it or no."

"Then how do we get in?" Luna persisted. "Sneak in through the back?" Sibyl shook her head. "Why no, too well-guarded?"

"Actually, if I'm not mistaken, it isn't guarded at all," Sibyl said, twitching her nose. The others looked at her curiously. "If you recall, we had some doubt whether the prison was here, because it wasn't receiving shipments big enough to be food for the prisoners. But this close, it's finally clear. They solved the problem of food, the same way we did: The prisoners are being fed zombies, and zombies are being fed to each other. And there's no need to keep anyone out of the casino's ground floor... because that is where the zombies are."

"Hey." Austin turned his head, almost absent-mindedly. Jay walked beside him. "So... Your wife said we should talk."

He nodded. "She told me about you. You saved a girl. Not bad."

"She took care of herself," said Jay. "Six people with her didn't."

Austin glanced with casual interest. "So... you think she could have made it with or without you?"

"Yeah... If she tried." Austin moved a little slower as he stepped out of the side entrance.

"And you think the others couldn't survive with you... but could have without you?"

Jay gave a look like he had taken a bite of ice cream and discovered it was sauerkraut-flavored. "Holy *," he said, "you're like Master Yoda crossed with Dr. House."

"Huh... That's what I could have said about the people I've been with lately. I guess it's rubbing off a bit... So, anyway. Do you think she would have tried to make it without you?"

"I... I- don't know."

"Then why are you acting so sure you do?"

"Uh... Wow. You must think I'm a total loser."

"No," Austin said, with rising feeling. "You did better than I did."

"But... You saved three people from a whole swarm."

"And... Krista didn't tell you about Tal?"

"Okay... two. Still."

"But they weren't the first group of people I was with. Or the second, or even third... But you, you found someone in the thick of it... and you stayed with her all the way."

"Hey. Uh, it's not like that," Jay said. "I know she still wants it, sometimes... but it's just not there."

"Have you tried to tell her what you just told me?"

"What? That I'm not as good as she thinks? Tons of times."

"No, that she's stronger than she thinks she is." They were well into the street. Behind them, there was a shout, audible from inside the mall.

"Hey," Jay said, "where are you going?"

"To catch up with a few friends," Austin said, walking faster. A shout came from outside.

"Dude... It's way dangerous to be out here. C'mon. Let's go back in."

"You go," Austin said, walking ahead as Jay stood and stared.

"Don't you have something to tell Krista?" Jay called out.

"Tell her I love her," Austin said, "and that she should drive to Henderson for the night." Austin seemed to fade into the lengthening shadows of the wreckage and rubble. Turning back, Jay saw men running out of the mall, and Sydney holding Krista back from following.

There was a rustle of movement but no other sound as the Nurse drew near Meadows' cell. "I know you can still hear me," she said. "I think, probably, you can still understand me. I'm sorry. You're the only one who could know how much. I wanted to put you down. Quick. Clean. _He_ was the one who let you end up this way. Now he's finally given me orders to take care of you the way we should have, only now, I'm thinking that would be too easy. Too easy for _him_. So, while there's still enough of you to listen, I'll tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, I could let you go. I could give you a shot at him. I'll do it. Just one thing: Show me you understand. Tell me you won't come after me." Inside, there was a soft chuckle.

"A bit theatrical, isn't it?" the Colonel said, audibly short of breath.

The Mechanic surveyed the cavernous chamber that was the apex of the Luxor pyramid, and the cityscape spreading out beyond the glass. He shrugged. "We're dealing with a theatrical kind of man," he said. He looked at the box, about the size and shape of an ammunition case, that the Colonel carried with both hands. The other man shifted, as if instinctively trying to remove his burden from view. But the Mechanic was already looking at the object that was being pulled by the unit's communications officer. It looked like a wheeled, slightly oversized golf bag. A faint whir came from motors in the wheels, which acoustics magnified into a soft, steady, mosquito-like hum. Even so, the officer was clearly exerting himself to move it.

"All right, we inspect the Package," the Colonel said, as his comm officer came up right behind him. He set the box down and turned to examine the larger object. "Sheath intact... container shell, by all indications intact." He unlocked a pad lock that bound together the two zippers of a flap on top. Pulling back the flap, he uncovered a lid with a combination lock. "No deterioration on the access panel... Give that back." The Mechanic was holding up the box for inspection.

"I am made death, the destroyer of worlds!" he said, hefting the box with one hand. "Unless I drop this thing. And my, it is quite heavy." He set it down nonchalantly, and walked up to the wheeled cylinder. "Now, if you gentlemen will bear with me, I'd like to go over this. I see they went with mechanical combination locks rather than electronics. Old school. And there's been a story going round that in the old days, all personal activation links were set at... I'll be damned." He lifted the lid, exposing a second, smaller lid next to another combination lock. "I suppose they were a little more creative with this one. Fortunately, both of my lines of work require sensitive fingers. Here we go." The second lid lifted, revealing a wide socket.

"All very impressive," the Colonel said, "but it doesn't get you anywhere without the Box."

"Ah, yes, the Box," the Mechanic said, turning back to the smaller box. "Now, this is new." A lock on the side of the lid bore not a key hole or dial, but a glossy pad that flouresced faintly green at the slight touch of his finger. "I suppose I shouldn't do that again."

"It's a biometric access link," the Colonel said. "It can only be opened with my thumb print."

"So I could copy your prints."

"The sensors can distinguish between actual skin and other materials."

"So I could cut off your thumb."

"It's also temperature-sensitive."

"So I open it while the thumb's fresh."

"The contents will become inactive within 90 minutes of being removed."

"So I keep it warm." The Colonel stared at the Mechanic, less in fear or shock than in absolute disgust, rather like a diner at a roach in his soup. The Mechanic stood up, and slammed both lids of the package. "Gentlemen... I know _him_. And I can tell you with complete honesty and objectivity, that there is _nothing_ I can do that he can't."

He looked out to the horizon. "And I'll tell you something else. I can see what a man like you gets out of being where you are. There's no feeling like the power of life and death, and you can't do better than knowing that there are thousands, even millions, that live or die by your say-so. If that's what's good for you, I can respect that. But me, I like things one on one. A patient on the table. An enemy in the cross hairs. Intimacy. The personal touch."

"It's never been like that," the Colonel said hoarsely, his gaze following the Mechanic's outward. "Not to me. What I always cared about was being strong enough to make the call, whether I liked it or not- and I _don't_. I did it for the rest, so they wouldn't have to bear that burden, and so they would know that someone out there had the wisdom and the courage to weigh the needs of the many against the needs of the few."

"Well- to each his own," the Mechanic said. Then, slyly, "And how many are there of you?"

The Colonel managed a laugh as he reached for his sidearm.


	28. The Center cannot hold

At 365 feet tall, the pyramid of the Luxor casino fell a hundred feet short of the Great Pyramid of Giza, but the hundred-foot Sphinx that fronted the casino was nearly twice as tall as Giza's original. But, after less than a year in Zombieland, the modern mock-monoliths were a sight more forlorn than the boasts of Ozymandias. The Sphinx had lost not just the nose and chin, but an eye and a cheek to of the dark glass that lined the pyramid was riddled with cracks, and large swaths had gone the way of the fine facing of Giza's pyramids. There was little chance that the peoples of the latter world would ever come to marvel at the steel and concrete beneath.

As Austin stood between the paws of the Sphinx, he sensed something darker than the end of civilization, and somehow, he knew that any within would have more pressing concerns than barring his passage. He thought of the hospital taken by Clan Tweedle, then destroyed with them. And then he thought of the final chapters of _The Island of Doctor Moreau_, of the Doctor's creations falling lower than the beasts they had been without him. He took a deep breath and stepped forward. No need to worry about any traps to keep him out; anything like that would be reserved for those going the other way. Then, without breaking strike, he leveled his .22/.410 at a silent shape nearly beside him.

"Getting better," Tigre said, cocking his crossbow with a click. "Unfortunately, you've put me in a situation, and I can't see but two remedies. I kill you right here, or... I take you with me."

His name is unimportant. Apart from any other considerations, it has been a considerable amount of time since he used it, and there are times when he has struggled to remember it. He does not bother to wonder what has happened. What is happening was what matters, and that is obvious. The door of a holding cell is open. Two men lies dead, and another is shrieking somewhere out of sight. He unfolds his weapon's stock and follows the screams.

He fires instinctively at the figure which comes bolting out of the dark. Already lurching, it falls at his feet, and he looks down to see terrible wounds, and the insignia of two serpents and a sword. He looks too long, as another figure is coming. A kick knocks the charging enemy back faster than bringing his gun to bear, and then a burst aimed at the head hits a light fixture instead. A spray of sparks leaves him blind, and that is when he turns and runs.

Sybil and her companions were nonchalant as they crossed Luxor's main casino area. At least five hundred zombies milled about among the machines, statuary and false-front architecture, and there had to be at least as many out of sight. Boca pointed and grinned with a single "hee". Sibyl looked and scowled in distaste. "Yes, I see they have `Floozie Q'," she said, turning away from the nearly nude zombie. "But she is none of our concern."

After a short silence, she spoke again: "I smell something... Heh, I mean something _different_. Not _la gente_, or H_ermanos_, or more of _el ganado_... Whatever it is, it's near us, above us."

Juan gave a sharp sniff, and tensed. "I know the scent. It was in Abilene."

"_Fuentes_," Sibyl hissed; the word translated as "fountains", and what it meant was the most feared of the zombies, the gushers.

"They kept some alive? _Que loco_," murmured Luna.

"It makes sense," Sibyl said. "A few wild _caballos _keep the rest close to the stable." Juan nodded. Gushers were infected by a different strain of the virus than lepers and ordinary zombies, with a similar but noticeably different effect on the body's pheromones. As a result, gushers would attack Strain 1 zombies, and other zombies appeared to avoid them. Gushers were known to be slower than other zombies, but believed to be more intelligent. Data was mercifully limited, as the Strain 2 virus generally killed its victims too quickly to spread far.

"They're above us," Sibyl continued. "The captive _Hermanos_ will be above them. They are not so many, but do not doubt it will be difficult."

"Don't no matter," Luna said. "They got our _Hermanos_. They got Jack."

"Ah. Jack," Sibyl said regretfully. "When we were being held together, he asked my counsel. Then he acted against it. I fear, when we get to him, that we may have to kill him."

The lights Jack Ketch's cell were very bright, even by normal standards. To him, it was more blinding than darkness, so much that he wrapped his head in an unidentifiable rag and crouched with his face pressed into a corner of the cell. When the lights suddenly went off, he immediately raised his head and called out, "Who's there?"

"Never mind who," came a gasping, frightened male voice. "What did you do to Meadows?"

"Who? Oh, the one I bit, I suppose. Well, you may have heard, there's a bit of a legend among the Brotherhood. Some of us, we fall off the wagon. Like the ones who took your man. And the story goes that it starts, or usually does, when they break one of our rules: Do not eat the brain."

"Right. The virus concentrates in the brain. What about it?"

"Well... On the way here, I ate a bit. Then I bit him. Wasn't sure what would happen."

"He turned, fast. And now he's out. He's trailing me."

"_Well._ That is a problem. So, doesn't seem like the best time and place to stop and chat."

"Ketch. I can let you out."

He scratched his chin. "You think he's more dangerous than I am?"

"I know he is."

"I guess you're prob'ly right. The fast burns, they're always tricky to handle. Pretty predictable, but awful fast. And your guy, he was quick to begin with. But if you're right, how can I help?"

"Work with me. At least you will know when he's coming."

"I can do that. Now you mention it, I do believe I have his scent. He isn't close, but not far, neither. Better hurry."

"I can open your cell..."

"Hmm. Seems like I'd be safer in here. Unless you can throw in a weapon."

"I've got the knife we took away when we caught you. Here it is." He held up the kukri.

"Okay, that's enough to make a deal on. Open the door and we'll shake." The door was already opening. An outstretched hand proffered the knife.

"We're in the annex- the step pyramids on the north side, five stories up," the _angel_ explained. "There's some security measures in between, including a pack of Strain 2s."

"Clever. Fighting fire with fire."

"That's what they said before Abilene."

"_Indeed._ I'd like to hear more about that. Some other time."

"Yeah. Right. Some other time. So. I can handle the gushers, and the other things. And you can focus on taking care of him. Hold on." The _angel _punched three keys on a pad glued to the wall. "C'mon. Quick." Ketch matched strides as his captor stepped briskly to the door of a stairwell.

"Does this go all the way down?" Ketch said with interest.

"Yeah, but I don't have the right code for what's at the bottom." Behind them, there was a strangled cry and a thump.

"Not him," Ketch said. "He's moving back the other way."

"That will get him to the casino," the _angel_ said as they hurried down the stairs. After three flights, he opened a door and fired his sidearm twice at a dim figure.

"That's the only one," Ketch said. "I think the rest are moving away."

"Probably after your friends," the _angel_ said, walking faster as they entered the corridor.

"Yeah... And you know, that gets me thinking... You know what would be the best way to take care of that Meadows character? Have a distraction." The angel whirled, at the very moment Ketch's blade thrust into his leg. A good shove was enough to send him sprawling. As the leper vanished into the dark, he called back, "_Nobody _lets Jack Ketch walk away without living to regret it."

The Mechanic was glad his armor was built to keep its wearer cool. The apex of the Luxor pyramid was less like a greenhouse than a solar oven. Even with a number of the giant prisms that lined it gone, the temperature reached well over 120 F on a summer afternoon. He was also vaguely pleased that his suit kept odors out as well as it kept them in. He was long, long past being sensitive to such things, but the Colonel was bound to be letting off more than most. He looked briefly down, then donned an extra and especially heavy glove on his right hand. It took three tries before the Box opened. The contents was a little thing, not much bigger than a pen, but a bit heavy for holding with only one hand. It went smoothly into the socket of the Package, and at a twist, it clicked in place. A square lid on the surface of the package popped open, to reveal a little red button under a small pane of glass. It took a visible but not strenuous effort to remove the Package from its shell. What came out was a cylinder not quite 7 inches wide and not quite two feet long. It fit well enough in his backpack. Then he whistled a few bars of _Patton _as he climbed up a ladder to a catwalk above. There he sat, his legs dangling off the edge, and as the sun sank low behind him, he put on a pair of sunglasses.


	29. Apex

"Now," Tigre said, "as long as we're talking, I'd appreciate it if you got that gun out of my face."

Austin stepped back warily. "Only if you put that crossbow away first."

Tigre smiled. "No way in hell, naturally. And not bad. You've put me through a lot of disappointments lately, you know. Especially the hospital."

"What about the hospital?" Austin said. "Why didn't you help, when my wife and my son were on the line?"

"Things don't work that way," Tigre said. "A _padrino_ guards one person, and even then, it doesn't mean protecting 'im every time, especially when he does something really stupid. Oh yeah, you really *ed up big that time."

"It was a * up to save them?"

"With Clan Tweedle in the mix? * yes. They would have let _you_ go, you know. She would have given them more fun. Better eating, too. And you came that close..."

Austin's hands trembled, not just in anger at Tigre's callousness but at the knowledge that he was right. "You know why I went back for her? Because I love her, and I was tired of running."

"Right, and where's she now?" Tigre took a disdainful sniff. "What the * did you do, screw her unconscious and then walk away? Holy *, you did."

"_She_ is the reason I came back," Austin said.

"Go right ahead and tell yourself that. But deep down, you already know the truth: You're here because you can't walk away."

"Yes- and that's why she loves me. I _don't_ walk away."

"Fine then. Come up with me, and see what that gets you." Austin stepped toward the door. Tigre shook his head, pointed at the Sphinx and took out a long rope. "Uh-uh. We can go faster up the _outside._"

The most dangerous thing about the gushers was that, being slow, they stayed close together, and so, when they converged on prey, they did so all at once. Thus, the first encounter the lepers had with them was when a whole pack came straight at them out of the darkness. Fortunately there was no room for Juan's rifle to miss. Five shots were fired in as many seconds, then Boca stepped in with a machete. Juan reloaded in time to bring the ninth gusher down heaving at the Sibyl's feet. He worked the bolt and had his finger twitching on the trigger before realizing that no more were following behind it. Sibyl sniffed, and nodded. "There are more ahead, but not many," she said. "More are behind us. Go to the rear; the gun will serve us better against them."

"Lousy, noisy, smelly guns," Ketch muttered as he pulled the kukri from a twitching gusher's skull. It was the last of three, and no more were coming, which on thoughtful consideration was worrisome. He looked alarmed but not surprised when a hideous cackle came from the dark. "So, didn't go for the present I left, ay? Well, I suppose I would have thrown 'im back myself. So come on over, and we can die laughing." The cackle grew louder and more crazed as he raised the blade, and he began cackling himself.

"You hear that?" Luna said. "Somebody laugh like _un cuervo loco_."

"Yes, but I believe there are greater problems closer to hand," Sibyl said. Even as she spoke, snarls, a series of pops and heavy thumps. The lepers all moved to one side or the other as an _angel_ with the scent of blood came running, with a whole swarm of gushers behind them. At the sight of the lepers, the _angel_ gave a strangled shriek and opened fire. Boca wrapped his arms around Conejo, and then they fell together. Luna cried out at a near miss. Juan returned fire, but the _angel_ had already disappeared, charging straight through the door of a hotel room with a goodly part of the swarm behind him, and then, judging from a crash of glass, straight through a window overlooking the casino floor three stories below. Juan continued firing while Sibyl pried the weeping boy from the slain giant's arms. Luna darted forward, then froze at the Sibyl's dismayed stare. She touched her strangely numb cheek, and felt the splinter of a poison pellet.

Austin grunted as he swung hand over hand along a rope that stretched from the head of the Sphinx to a broken window almost halfway up the pyramid. For all his cardio exercises, it was brutal to pull his way along while fighting the force of gravity's terrible pull on his body. When he finally swung inside, he collapsed instantly, heedless of scattered, shattered glass. When he raised his weary head, he found Tigre already two-thirds of the way across. "Now this, _this_ isn't so bad," Tigre said as he dropped to the carpet with only the faintest crackle of glass. "When we went through training, we had to do something like this, only the rope was slanted about thirty degrees uphill- and we had to wear 20 kilo packs the whole way. Oh, and my instructor wouldn't let us wear gloves."

Austin staggered to his feet. "There's gunfire below," he said, gazing poignantly down. "I think I heard a scream."

"So?" Tigre strode forward and kicked open a door.

"They're in trouble."

"So what? If you're coming, keep up." Tigre disappeared into the hallway, and after a moment's hesitation, Austin followed. He took one last look behind as he walked, to see the Tremors truck driving down the boulevard.

The Sibyl held up a hollow-tipped needle, heated with a lighter. With a single thrust, she had removed the splinter and cauterized the wound. Luna whimpered, less at the pain than at a growing stiffness that had turned her face to a mask and was now spreading to her right arm. "It was a very shallow wound, and the splinter was small," Sibyl said. "She may live, if you get her to safety."

"Nobody leaves without you!" Juan exclaimed as he reloaded.

"Your work is done," said Sibyl. "Mine is not, and it is the most dangerous of all. Go, and be my witness whatever befalls.

Juan mournfully shouldered Luna. "I would rather die with you than live to be a hundred."

"Neither is your choice to make," Sibyl said. Then she looked to Conejo. "You must also go."

"_Te amores, Madre,_" the boy said through tears.

Juan held out the rifle to her, but she shook her head. "I've been meaning to try one, but I suppose now's not the time." The other lepers hurried away. As the first gusher stumbled its way over a pile of the dead, the Sibyl sidestepped a spume, and in the same moment unsheathed a sword cane. Then she strode forward to meet the lunging gusher with a thrust to the mouth.

Austin was even more winded as they topped yet another flight of stairs. He felt embarrassed that Tigre insisted on keeping pace with him. He stooped on the landing and retched. Tigre's hand fell on his shoulder. "C'mon," he said. "You told me you wanted to stay in this to the end, so why not move like you plan to finish?"

Austin straightened and managed to break into a wobbly run. Tigre followed, then overtook and seized him. As Austin was pulled back, a female voice spoke: "So, the White Tiger! The Prodigal returns!"

Tigre grinned venomously. "Well, I'm not planning on the fatted calf for dinner. _Nurse. _You know who I'm here for. Where is he?"

The woman laughed, a single bitter "hah!" "He's upstairs. All the way up, far as I can tell. I was on my way to pay him one last visit myself."

Tigre calmly resumed ascending the stairs. "It looks like we have a common interest, then."

"Right," the Nurse said, standing straight and waving empty hands. "Why not team up? Oh, right- I hate you even worse than him. Not because you ran out, neither. That, I could almost _respect_. It's just, well, he _is_ a narcissistic sociopath, but then, he's never pretended to be anything else. You, on the other hand, _you _are a know-it-all, sanctimonious, hypocritical, whiny little chicken*." In a blink of an eye, she dropped to a crouch, reaching for something at her ankle. Austin and Tigre fired together.

The casino floor was in turmoil. A pack's worth of gushers stalked the area, ripping apart any zombie that didn't get out of their way. A group of more than a hundred stormed about the rear, chasing a wounded angel. After turning back from a well-barred door at the pyramid's southwest corner, their prey darted back, evading the leading edge of the swarm and vaulting on top of a slot machine. He stepped to the next machine and kicked the first over onto an especially hapless zombie, then ran down the row, alternately spraying the swarm with his gun and peating them back with a long piece of pipe. Then, on reaching the end of the row, he shouldered the gun, thrust the pipe to the floor and pole-vaulted over the zombies' heads, just as a grenade blew the door open.

Austin somehow found a second wind as the reached the uppermost maintenance levels, where floors and stairs gave way to catwalks and ladders. "The Luxor lamp is really forty bulbs, surrounded by giant prisms," he panted as he ascended a ladder. "It's the same kind they use in IMAX projectors- actually about half as powerful, individually. They say- well, the bulbs are full of pressurized xenon gas, so, what people say is- is that if a bulb breaks, then the gas decompresses, and the bulb actually explodes an'- and they say- it's as powerful as a hand grenade going off. So- we should be careful up here."

"Quiet," Tigre hissed, and even his whisper echoed through the increasingly cavernous space. Austin started to mount the next ladder, but Tigre jerked him back. "_This,_ I do alone." Austin made no protest, but his eyes locked on another ladder close by.

As Tigre entered the sweltering apex, a cheerful greeting came down like the voice of a sadistic god: "Well, hello, White Tiger! I've been expecting you!"

Tigre dropped behind a lamp housing the side of a small fridge, searching the latticework overhead. "The Meat Mechanic," he said. "Still as charming as ever."

"Nobody else thought you would make it, you know," the Mechanic said, from what had to be a slightly different position. "No, they were all sure they would have you taken care of before you got near here. Even now, if anyone's still alive, I expect they're telling themselves, it would have been different, if only. I know better. For a man like you, `what ifs' are just blanks to be filled in. One way or another, it was going to end here. You and me. One on one."

Austin was already at the top of the other ladder, trying to scan the chamber before emerging. He thought he glimpsed a moving shadow overhead, but ducked down as the voice said, "The one thing that surprises even me is that you didn't come alone. By the way, your companion is quite right about the bulbs, so using the lamps as cover is not a particularly good idea." He stopped for a moment, to say with a tone of real sadness, "You were my best student... but you were the one I could never teach."

"Oh, but I learned!" Tigre shouted, magnifying the echoes. "All the wrong lessons."

"Then you ought to remember the first thing I taught you," the Mechanic said mildly. "_Never_ fight fair."

As he spoke, every one of the lamps came on.


	30. Tigre Burning Bright

At the rear of the Luxor pyramid, scores of zombies continued to pour out of the breached exit. Most quickly fanned out, heading north and/or east. But some continued to mill about behind the casino, and a group of six were nosing curiously at a dumpster. One ventured to lift the lid, only to withdraw its hands with a fresh wound. The zombie persisted, lifting the lid again until a pipe thrust through its eye. The others drew back in vague concern. The lid lifted again, stopping with a "chnk" as something was wedged beneath it. Then a pair of hands raised the pipe, to thrust down liking a poling gondolier. With horrendous squeaking and creaking, the dumpster began to move. After a vain attempt to block the self-propelled waste receptacle, the zombies dispersed.

The dumpster moved ten feet, then fifteen, then stopped. As the distressed sounds of the dumpster died down, a hint of furtive movement could be heard. An angel's visor peered very briefly from under the lid. Then there was a clicking that could only be a fresh magazine being reloaded, and the muzzle of a gun thrust from under the lid. At the same time, unfortunately, an ovoid object sailed lazily into the dumpster. The lid slammed shut, the gun clattered to the pavement, and a dull "BOOM" buckled the walls of the dumpster.

Andy Capp stepped forward, and stooped to compare the gun on the ground with the Skorpion already in his hands. It was only a moment before he set down the Skorpion and picked up the carbine.

Holding a hand below his slitted eyes, Austin peered into a brightness that was scarcely less opaque than pitch dark. It was easier to track by sound than sight, but taunting echoes made even that nearly impossible. "Now, killing each other isn't going to be easy for either of us," the Mechanic was saying. "But perhaps things don't need to come to that. Are you here to kill me? Or for something else?"

"I just need to know… one thing," Tigre grunted.

"Well? I'm listening!" the Mechanic said after a pause, waving his arms theatrically. "Did you lose your train of thought? _Hm?_ Are you trying to send your question in telepathic form? Or is this to be a guessing game? Very well, I will guess. You want to know… why you could never make it as one of us."

"I made it pretty far, didn't I? Further than you!" As Tigre spoke, his voice came from higher up; he had managed to find a ladder- yet, Austin could have sworn that someone had just passed between him and one of the lamps behind him.

"And yet, here we are, you the outcast, and me the master. You rose swifter and higher, yet you were the first to fall- as I knew you would. I tried to warn you, too. When you didn't listen, I tried other discouragements. I believe at least three men I marked as having potential quit because of the things I put the class through _trying_ to convince you to drop out. I could never understand why you kept at it."

"Because I wanted to do the best I could, for my country."

"Ah! That right there was a huge mistake. God and country is all well and good for the old folks at home and the boys in the trenches, but men like us need that * the way drug cartel bosses need their own product. All we should be thinking about is us, the SOBs giving us the orders and the SOBs they want dead. It's _so_ much simpler that way."

"Is that it?" Now Tigre was on the Mechanic's level.

"What can I say? Some things, you either have, or you don't, and if you have to ask what the thing is, the safe bet is you don't."

"Try. Tell me, how can even look in a mirror and not want to cut your own throat."

Tigre's voice was close; the Mechanic's, closer still. "Frankly... I just don't care."

Even as he spoke, Austin aimed straight up and fired. Buckshot glanced off metal and shattered glass. He thought he heard a grunt of surprise, a hint of a scuffle, and a very heavy thud. But he was already running, and just in time, as a body slammed down onto a lamp. "Tigre!" he shouted. Daring to look back, he saw a smoking, steaming thing sprawled across three lamp housings, and looked away before he could be sure whether it was still moving. That brought his gaze up to a figure half-crouching against a buckled guardrail, clutching huge pack.

"Go now, Samaritan," Tigre said.

"No," he said. "You said I could see this to the end, and I'm staying to the end."

"But it is over," said Tigre. "It's _all_ over. There's only one thing left."

"What's in that pack?" Austin questioned sternly.

"A * fondue set! What do you think?"

"Tigre... You're my _padrino!_ I'm not leaving you!"

"Then that... will be your last mistake."

"Tigre! You said you care about helping our country, that that's why you did what you did! Whatever you're thinking of doing, it's going to destroy any good you ever did! It's going to betray who you really are!"

"Our country is _gone_, Samaritan," Tigre said. "And that makes all the * I did, good for nothing. The only good thing I have to leave behind... is you."

"Then _stay_ with me! Leave your past in the past!"

"But I can't, Samaritan," Tigre said, his voice leaden. "If I was like him, I wouldn't care. It would be enough for me if I could forget. But what I've seen, what I've done, you can't get down any the memory hole. It sticks to you, and grows on you. It seeps into you. You could do a good deed a day for the rest of your life. You could join the Salvation Army, or Amnesty Inernational, or * Scientology! You could check yourself into a loony bin, or join a monastery, or disappear into the Himilayas and spend twenty years communing with a herd of yaks! You could blow your money on whores, on booze, on blow, on priests, on shrinks! You still won't forget! You can _never_ forget!"

"Then remember you walked away!" Austin shouted. "Remember you weren't like him."

"You think that makes me better?" Tigre said rhetorically. "No, the Nurse was right about one thing: I had less excuse than he did. He didn't choose to be what he was, and he never did anything but what came natural. But I _chose_ to become what I was. I worked at it. I worked hard, until I was _**better**_ at it than he was."

As he spoke, the most damaged of the lamps beneath the Mechanic's exploded in a fountain of flame, sparks, and various shrapnel. Flame shot from the side of another damaged lamp housing, and a neighboring lamp began to smoke. Austin swore and drew back. "C'mon," he shouted, "if we don't get out of here before more of these things blow, we're both dead regardless!"

"Once I start this thing, none of that will matter," Tigre said. "Go. NOW."

"Yeah? Then what about Krista? What about everyone else in Vegas? Aren't they the people you fought for?"

"What about them? I did everything I could for them, and it didn't do any good. It didn't do any good because they weren't worth it. They're stupid, selfish bastards who elected even stupider and more selfish bastards who sent people like him and like me to win their wars without them having to be uncomfortable knowing how we did it! They are the worst ones in this equation."

"Then what about _me_? If I'm your one good thing, then show me you can do something better than check yourself out and take a city with you!"

"But maybe there isn't," the Mechanic said. "Maybe, when it's all said and done, the best I can do for you is make it easier to do what you have to. And you do know what you have to do. The _hardest_ thing to do."

Austin's hand tightened on the grip of his shotgun. "Don't," he said, already taking aim. "Not like this." Tigre thrust his hand into the pack. At the last split second, he stopped himself, as the pack fell from Tigre's hand, and he toppled with a kukri in the back.

"Nobody," a voice called out from the darkness, "lets Jack Ketch walk away without living to regret it."


	31. The Package

The self-destruction of the forty lamps that made up the Luxor light was like corn popping: first one, then another, then a few more, then several at once, and then volley after volley. Usually, a lamp housing would contain the blast and shrapnel from the bulb, but not the smoke, fire and sparks, and shed secondary shrapnel in the process. Glass tops fractured or shattered; reflectors were ejected, whole or in pieces; chunks of broken fan blades shot out the sides; in the most violent reactions, whole covers went flying like tossed graduation caps. Added to that was the rapidly intensifying heat and shear shock force, enough to break the glass and buckle the metal latticework of the apex exterior.

Austin didn't go down the ladder he had used to climb up; it was too close to the advancing flames. He ran, and it seemed to take only a moment to reach a ladder, which he did not so much climb as slide down. As he reached the level below, he looked up at the sound of a thud, and heard a shout: "Look out below!" He swung out of the way as Ketch dropped most of the way down, with Tigre over one shoulder.

"So," Austin said, "you say your dad was OSS?"

Ketch grinned. "I say lots of things."

"Is he alive?"

"Yeah. The knife hit him in the shoulder blade."

"Thank you."

"Don't. I was aiming for the head. Didn't expect to hit a bloody thing, of course, but I meant to try." Ketch's eyes narrowed. "Now what's this, a souvenir?"

Austin glanced in confusion at his left shoulder, which was aching a lot. Only then did he realize, and still without any recollection of picking it up, that he had climbed down from the apex chamber with the Package on his back. Ketch bared his teeth and gripped the handle of the kukri at his belt. Austin instinctively gripped the straps of the pack.

"Samaritan," a voice called out. In the blink of an eye, whatever spirit had brought him there left as instantly and intangibly as it had come. He let the pack slide right off his back, and turned to face Sibyl.

"Why?" he said.

_"Por la gente."_ She clasped a crucifix. "Because we were once such as they, and _He_ was once such as us."

He looked to Tigre. "What about him?"

"He will face the tribunal of the _Hermanos_." Sibyl said. "I can say no more."

"You did good, Samaritan," Ketch said. "Better than some of us thought."

Something inside Austin shot back to the surface. "What? What's that supposed to mean? That this was all some test? That all of you put your lives in my hands when you didn't trust me?"

"_Peace,_ Samaritan," Sibyl said. "Our purposes are not your concern. What matters is what this shall be to you."

He nodded and eased down, drawing back a hand that had somehow been edging toward the pack. Then a new voice spoke. "Me and me _hermana_, we always trust you," Luna said. "We trust you to do your best. Do the right thing. Do good by her, and her _hermana._ Too. Now go to her, Samaritan. Be with her, _siempre_, and _mi corazon_ will go with you." He nodded and smiled, though tears welled from his eyes. Then he started as a beam punched halfway through the ceiling.

"Now if you hadn't noticed," Ketch shouted as he started down another ladder, "this really isn't the best place to stand around and chat!"

"You disobeyed my command," Sibyl said in mild reproof after they descended the first flight of stairs.

"Yes, _hermanisma_," Luna said, "and I must confess... I found some friends, too."

Sibyl smiled.


	32. Homecoming

**Last chapter, pretty much (though I plan one more as an epilogue), following the latest chapter of "Death Valley Drag", with the big reveal that anyone thinking straight would have saved for the end. Watch for the finale "Vive Las Vegas", not to mention an ebook edition to sort out the mess that is the two current installments of the Vegas Saga!**

Battle raged on Las Vegas Boulevard, yet Austin was virtually unmolested as he walked with the Sibyl back toward Planet Hollywood. A grisly figure standing over several dead bodies waved as he went by. "How many lepers were in there?" he asked.

"About 300." Austin gaped. "Not all from Vegas, of course. Luxor was a consolidation of earlier projects, and as the others were shut down, prisoners were transferred."

"Now that they're free," Austin said, "what will you do?"

Sibyl shook her head. "Even I can speak only for myself, and even I have no plan. I think that a good thing. You ought to learn to be wary of men with plans. The _angeles_ had a plan. Tigre had a plan. The Chieftain has plans. And what have their plans come to, save harm- and much of that to themselves? That way is folly, and futility. Better to trust in His hands than one's own. And so I will go to the wilderness to pray, and I will counsel the other _Hermanos_ to do the same."

"But- we need help! What good is it going out there to talk to God when you could do so much good here?"

"The best help we can offer, not many will be ready to take. And what is truly the greater good: To save a man, or let him learn to save himself?"

"Right. That sounds like your people in a nutshell. But- What if there's something we miss? What if too many people won't listen? What if- if I'm not strong enough."

"What if, what if, what if, what if. Always the words of the worrier. And so, what if- then what? What could you do that would anything different? Why fret and scheme about tomorrow, when you could be living wisely and justly today?"

Austin nodded, and a single tear ran down his cheek. "I won't see you again, will I?"

Sibyl put a finger to her lips. "Speak no such thing. It is not ours to know what will come tomorrow. Save this: That I will always remember you." And with that, she faded into the dark.

It seemed only a moment later that Austin was transfixed by four glaring headlights. He only staggered back, and the vehicle had to brake desperately to keep from running him over. He was grateful to recognize the Tremors Truck, but less so to find Sydney at the wheel. "Get in! No, the back!" Austin circled and climbed into the camper. He smiled at the sight of Krista, and Abbie to boot. But Abbie's face was buried in her hands, and his wife only looked up to glare at him. He had to grab the door frame to keep from falling out as the truck roared back to life.

Austin managed to squeeze through the door without taking his arm from around Abbie. Krista followed with a hand on her sister's shoulder. Though the parking lot of Planet Hollywood was crowded, there was no rush to meet them. Those who were not occupied with the battle appeared to be focused on another set of new arrivals: Q and a passenger, Jack Ketch. Austin detached himself and went to tend to the leper. The sisters embraced and kept walking. Abbs brightened at Nogales, standing and watching. But when their eyes met, he turned and jogged away, not before she saw heartbreaking anger in his face.

In the midst of trying to interpret Jack Ketch's sullen, semi-intelligible speech, Austin looked up, whipping his head toward a voice. He had been telling himself he needed to prepare for this, indeed to prevent it at all costs, but he could only watch as his wife and sister-in-law met the young mother from Arkansas.

"Abilene," Krista said, summoning her best smile, "this is-"

Only then did she realize that her sister and her friend were frozen in their tracks, each with a shattering look of grief. It was Abbs who managed to whimper: "Chacha?" And in a moment, Krista knew.

In 99 worlds or even 999, things might have been different. If Abbs had been further from Krista, or Chacha nearer; if Chacha hadn't stepped forward and reached out just so; if it hadn't been so clear that her grief was also guilt- any one of a myriad of differences, and the three might have embraced in tears.

But in this world, Abbs cringed back, burying her face in Krista's chest, and her foster sister threw a bunch that sent her biological sister sprawling to the asphalt.


	33. Darkest Night

**Here's the epilogue chapter. First some angst, then a cliffhanger, and finally an idea from back when this was supposed to be just oddball vignettes that I saved for a closer.**

The mall was dark except for pools of emergency lighting that did little except accentuate the dark. The figure flitting down the ring-shaped corridor could barely be seen as she skirted every disk of pallid blue-white light. But when the Wyland gallery was reached, Chacha stepped into the light, revealing the wrenching sight of her face, red with tears and bruised from Krista's blow. "Krista... please," she said in a strangled voice.

The reply came from pitch darkness. "You can't see her," Krista said. "Not ever."

"Is that what she wants?"

"It's what's good for her." After a long pause, Krista said, "Well? Are you going to beg?"

"No," Chacha whispered. "Just- please don't hate me." An equivocal grunt came from the dark. After another long silence, Chacha flitted away, with half-choked, guttural sobs that could be heard long after she faded into the dark.

Austin and Abilene huddled on a couch, with only an EXIT sign for light. Krista stooped to look Abbs in the eye, wincing at a pain in the back. Abbs raised her face ever so slightly from her hands, and Krista extended her arms for an embrace. Instead, Abbs threw her arms around Austin and buried her head in his chest.

Jack Ketch awoke in impenetrable dark. Sitting up, he heard a chorus of guns being cocked and pumped. Austin's voice called out, "Jack Ketch! Can you speak?"

"'Course I can talk," Ketch said between mumbled curses. He swore loudly on running into a wall. "G'me some * light in here!" Outside the dark gave way to gray mist. "You call that light?"

"Ketch... that's the mall entrance. It's wide open, to broad daylight. Ketch... are you all right?"

"All right? Do I sound all right? Bastards... bloody bastards..."

"Ketch! What's happening?"

"Wha's happening? What's happening? I'll tell you what's happening! Those bastards, bloody * bastards..." His voice dropped to a mumble, then rose to a sudden crescendo, "_The bastards! _ _They __**cured **__me!"_

Epilogue

"Okay," Sydney said to Bruce, "how are we gonna do this?"

On the other side of the door, Bruce frowned. "Uh... I guess I could knock." He wrapped twice with his ball prosthesis. "I'm Bruce- uh, well, just Bruce, from the Treasure Island casino. We know somebody's in there! We just want to talk!" Just as he was getting ready to knock the door open, locks and bolts abruptly clicked, and the door opened, to reveal a woman with graying hair.

"You strangers have been making a ruckus," she said scoldingly. "What do you want?"

Something in Sydney's mind snapped. "`Ruckus'? Ma'am, you shot at our men with a slug gun! If we didn't have Kevlar, you could have killed three people! And what the * is going on in here?" He pushed past her

The woman scowled. "Well! If you young men think you can just barge in uninvited, maybe you deserve a few flesh wounds."

"Ma'am, we need to see the premises," Bruce said. She grudgingly stepped aside.

Bruce examined the weapon in plain sight, a rugged old over-under double 12-gauge that looked most ideal for taking down a hippopotamus, propped up against piled water tanks and styrofoam coolers. Sydney went straight to the window and wrenched it all the way open, then leaned out to look down on twenty zombies foraging on a heap of dropped refuse. "What the * were you thinking? That's a swarm-class grouping, and why? Because it was too much trouble to carry your garbage out?"

The woman shrugged. "I'm fifty-eight with a bad back. After the pickups stopped, and the icebox went out, what was I supposed to do?"

Bruce interposed himself between Sydney and the woman. "Ma'am, why are you even still here? At least eight sweeps have gone by here! All you had to do was signal, and they would have taken you to one of the casinos. You could have had running water, power, medical attention, cable TV for cryin' out loud!"

The woman tsked. "Now why would I up and do something silly like that? I'm just fine up here. I have my books..." She pointed to a hoard of ragged romance novels. "I have Milo and Mustard..." She pointed to a cat that was probably alive, and a bird that definitely wasn't. "I see my neighbors all the time... though they don't seem to talk much these days... Why, I even get to watch Jay!"

"Jay?" Bruce said warily.

"Yes," the woman said, leading him to the window. "See?" Among the zombies below was one that bore a casual but readily evident resemblance to Jay Leno.

"Well then, he's canceled," Sydney said, already taking aim. A double tap sent the zombie to the pavement.

The woman gazed for a moment, then turned away with a shrug. "Well, I liked Letterman better."


End file.
